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This paper addresses how the design of collaborative regimes influences markers of legitimacy in Swedish water- and large carnivore governance. Based on institutional analysis and statistical analy ...

Opracowanie podejmuje problematykę nowego, wprowadzonego mocą nowelizacji kodek-su karnego z 13 czerwca 2019 roku, przestępstwa odpłatnego przyjęcia zlecenia zabójstwa (art. 148a § 1 k.k.). Nie ulega wątpliwości, że jest to rozwiązanie bezprecedensowe, nadające zasadzie ochrony życia i jej zakresowi zupełnie nowego znaczenia. Wyprowadza ono ochronę życia z dotychczaso-wych ram zachowań zabronionych chroniących to dobro, przesuwając ją na płaszczyznę zachowań, które nigdy dotąd nie były karalne, bardzo oddalonych od wystąpienia zamierzonego przez sprawcę skutku. Przestępstwo to, na co zwrócono uwagę już w toku prac nad nowelizacją ustawy karnej w licznych opiniach formułowanych przez przedstawicieli środowiska karnistycznego, budzi wiele wątpliwości, w tym takie, które wiążą się z poszanowaniem przez tę ustawową konstrukcji funda-mentalnych zasad prawa karnego. Kryminalizacja zachowań na tak odległym przedpolu naruszenia dobra prawnego może być w szczególności źródłem kontrowersji w kontekście gwarancyjnej funkcji prawa karnego. Przeprowadzona analiza ma na celu zwrócenie uwagi na kilka najistotniejszych kwestii dotyczących tego przestępstwa, między innymi jego charakteru prawnego, uzasadnienia jego typizacji, konstrukcji jego ustawowych znamion, możliwych przypadków zbiegu przepisów czy przestępstw, w których może pozostawać, trudności, jakie nowa konstrukcja może nieść dla praktyki wymiaru sprawiedliwości, a także samej potrzeby wprowadzenia omawianej „modyfikacji granic” prawnokarnej ochrony życia człowieka.

In the policy sciences, the intractability of disputes in natural resource governance is commonly explained in terms of a “devil shift” between rival policy coalitions. In a devil shift, policy actors overestimate the power of their opponents and exaggerate the differences between their own and their opponents’ policy beliefs. While the devil shift is widely recognized in policy research, knowledge of its causes and solutions remains limited. Drawing insights from the advocacy coalition framework and social identity theory, we empirically explore beliefs and social identity as two potential drivers of the devil shift. Next, we investigate the potential of collaborative venues to decrease the devil shift over time. These assumptions are tested through statistical analyses of longitudinal survey data targeting actors involved in three policy subsystems within Swedish large carnivore management. Our evidence shows, first, that the devil shift is more pronounced if coalitions are defined by shared beliefs rather than by shared identity. Second, our study shows that participation in collaborative venues does not reduce the devil shift over time. We end by proposing methodological and theoretical steps to advance knowledge of the devil shift in contested policy subsystems.

Conflict with humans is one of the primary reasons why large carnivore populations are declining worldwide. Rates of human‐carnivore conflict (HCC) are particularly high in East Africa, where human settlements tend to surround protected areas, maximizing potential for human‐carnivore interactions. Despite extensive HCC research in this region, HCC persists and carnivore populations continue to decline. Evident disconnects between HCC research and conservation action, management practices and policy formation have been cited as mechanisms associated with these trends. We conducted a literature review to determine the extent to which HCC research in East Africa is actionable within the context of management and policy formation. We evaluated 36 papers for co‐production, interdisciplinary collaboration, applied or theoretical publication and stakeholder engagement. Many were published by co‐authors in academia (63.8%) and collaborative efforts between academics and non‐governmental organizations (25.0%), with limited representation outside these sectors. Collaboration with disciplines outside the natural sciences, specifically the social and political sciences (both 2.8%), was also uncommon although humans were the primary topic of study in 28% of papers. Moreover, while many papers were published in applied journals (86%), few explicitly stated policy and management objectives. Stakeholder engagement was mostly in the form of surveys and questionnaires rather than direct involvement in the research process. Our review indicates that HCC research currently lacks strong evidence of actionability and we provide recommendations for improving the practical salience of conservation research.

ispartof: Frontiers In Ecology And Evolution vol:8 issue:10 status: published

Policy mixes (i.e. the total structure of policy processes, strategies, and instruments) are complex constructs that can quickly become incoherent, inconsistent, and incomprehensive. This is amplified when the policy mix strives to meet multiple objectives simultaneously, such as in the case of large carnivore policy mixes. Building on Rogge and Reichardt's analytical framework for the analysis of policy mixes, we compare the policy mixes of Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany (specifically Saxony and Bavaria), and Spain (specifically Castilla y Leon). The study shows that the large carnivore policy mixes in the case countries show signs of lacking vertical and horizontal coherence in the design of policy processes, weak consistency between objectives and designated policy instruments, and, as a consequence, lacking comprehensiveness. We conclude that creating consistent, coherent, and comprehensive policy mixes that build on multiple objectives requires stepping away from sectorized policy development, toward a holistic, systemic approach, strong collaborative structures across policy boundaries and regions, the inclusion of diverse stakeholders, and constant care and attention to address all objectives simultaneously rather than in isolation.

The legitimacy of large carnivore institutions to exercise truth-making power is assumed by constituents and other audiences. This study examines the power of language in shaping resistance to hegemonic truths about red wolf recovery in North Carolina. We conducted a critical discourse analysis of seven corpora produced by a discourse coalition comprising local, state, and federal actors. We demonstrate that these actors held seven cognitive interpretive repertoires in common (positioning; causality; contrariety; fatalist; falsifiability; victim; and big bad wolf). Findings indicate that repertoires influenced red wolf governance processes, reversed the risk narrative concerning recovery, split cognitive authority over red wolves in the public sphere, and set new, paradoxical limits for scientific inquiry. This study reinforces that language is power and, therefore, language is also legitimation. We conclude that researchers, citizens, and decision makers must attend to the ways in which language control contributes to legitimacy deficits through coordinated resistance.

Carnivore conservationists agree that addressing the socioeconomic needs of people is critical to human-carnivore conflict mitigation. We therefore welcome studies that encompass complex social and cultural factors that affect the severity of human-carnivore conflict on Namibian farmlands. However, we contend that the recent study by Rust et al. (2016) was poorly designed, used inappropriate sampling methods, lacked quantitative information on their qualitative results, and ultimately produced unsupported conclusions about the role of historic apartheid and current racism in exacerbating human-carnivore conflict in Namibia. We outline our concerns regarding the methods used, and demonstrate that the conclusions drawn by Rust et al. were not supported by their data.

Accurate analyses of the diets of predators are key to understand trophic interactions and defining conservation strategies. Diets are commonly assessed through analysis of non‐invasively collected scats, and the use of faecal DNA (fDNA ) analysis can reduce the species misidentifications that could lead to biased ecological inference. We review the scientific literature since publication of the first paper on amplifying fDNA , in order to assess trends in the use of genetic non‐invasive sampling (gNIS ) for predator species identification in scat‐based diet studies of North American and European terrestrial mammalian carnivores (Carnivora). We quantify error rates in morphology‐based predator species identification. We then provide an overview of how applying gNIS would improve research on trophic interactions and other areas of carnivore ecology. We found that carnivore species identity was verified by using gNIS in only 8% of 400 studies of carnivore diets based on scats. The median percentage of false positives (i.e. samples wrongly identified as belonging to the target species) in morphology‐based studies was 18%, and was consistent regardless of species’ body size. We did not find an increasing trend in the use of gNIS over time, despite the existing technical capability to identify almost all carnivore species. New directions for fDNA studies include employing high‐throughput sequencing (HTS ) and DNA metabarcoding to identify the predator species, the individual predator, the entire assemblage of consumed items, and the microbiome of the predator and pathogens. We conclude that HTS protocols and metagenomic approaches hold great promise for elevating gNIS as a fundamental cornerstone for future research in ecology and conservation biology of mammals., PM enjoyed a postdoctoral fellowship funded by FEDER funds through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness Factors - COMPETE and by National Funds through FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology (UID/BIA/50027/2013 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006821). RG was supported by a research contract from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (IF/564/2012). The University of Idaho, USA, provided salary support for LW. The Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD) provided travel funding between the University of Porto, Portugal, and the University of Montana, USA.

In this article, we investigate whether increased participation offers a way of addressing wicked policy problems. We utilize a natural policy experiment in the form of a 2010 reform of Swedish wildlife management policy aiming to solve longstanding conflicts over predators through increased stakeholder participation in regional Wildlife Management Boards. Using a panel study design containing quantitative and qualitative data, we estimate pre- and post-reform levels of three wickedness-reducing mechanisms: legitimacy, deliberation, and conflict intensity. Despite a substantial increase in participation, we find no evidence of reduced wickedness after the reform.

Granting legal protection to an endangered species has long been considered a major milestone for its conservation and recovery. A multitude of examples such as wolves in the contiguous USA (Boitani 2003) or many large carnivore populations in Europe (Chapron et al. 2014) have revealed how instrumental wildlife protection laws can be for species recovery. However, legal obligations to conserve endangered species may be useless if the rule of law is not properly enforced. Such situation is not exclusive to countries with political instability or weak institutional capacities but can also be relevant, for instance, to member states of the European Union and therefore bound to European legislation on nature conservation.

As wolf populations expand across Europe, many countries face challenges in finding ways to address the concerns of some elements among the rural stakeholders who are being asked to share their landscapes with wolves for the first time in several generations. In these recovery landscapes, wolves are associated with a wide range of conflicts that include economic, psychological, perceptional, social, cultural and political dimensions. A recurring demand concerns the desire to introduce the use of carefully regulated lethal control of wolves, through either culling by state employees or hunting conducted by rural hunters. Introducing such measures can be very controversial, and many critics challenge their legality under the international wildlife conservation instruments that have nurtured wolf recovery. We evaluate this issue for the case of wolves in Norway, which are strictly protected under the Bern Convention. Drawing on the latest results of social science research, we present the multiple lines of argumentation that are often used to justify killing wolves and relate these to the criteria for exceptions that exist under the Bern Convention. We conclude that while the Convention provides apparent scope for allowing the killing of wolves as a means to address conflicts, this must be clearly justified and proportional to the conservation status of wolves so as to not endanger their recovery.

In Finland, the conservation of large mammalian carnivores—brown bear, lynx, wolf and wolverine—is undermined by illegal killings that have commonly taken place after the implementation of national carnivore management plans. This hidden form of criminality cannot occur to such an extent without strong support from the local community. We examined the support of proximate groups by collecting data from hunters and women. In collecting data, we used non-active role playing with empathy-based fictitious stories. We used argumentation analysis to reveal the assumed species, the background of the illegal killing and especially the justifications and importance of community support for illegal killing. The results show that we have a conflict with strong basic emotions in hand as both illegal killing and support for illegal killing and hunting violators are based on anger and fear for children and domestic animals as well as frustration toward the authorities and the lack of proper management actions. The wolf is at the centre of the conflict due to the specific character of the species. Current policies have inevitably been lacking in terms of place-based policy, and that has led to conflicts between game management authorities/researchers and ordinary citizens. To facilitate a change in attitudes, we suggest focusing on affective factors via confidence-building measures.

The purpose of this article is to determine whether the increasing availability of new technologies, combined with persistent terrorist threats since September 11, 2001, weakened American citizens' Fourth Amendment rights. This will be accomplished by examining precedents established by the U.S. Supreme Court on Fourth Amendment protections, and contrasting it with the federal government's application of warrantless computer eavesdropping by using surveillance programs such as Project Echelon and Carnivore.

Many countries, including Sweden and Finland, are decentralizing the management of large carnivore species within their borders and emphasizing the role of stakeholder participation in legitimizing formal policy. Regional large carnivore committees (RLCCs), including representatives of authorities and non-governmental organizations, are essential to these endeavors. These committees are formally constituted in Sweden, whereas in Finland, they are informally developed from the bottom-up. In both countries, the declared roles of these committees are consultative. A comparative study based on survey data is described here, which address the question of how procedural legitimacy is shaped and maintained in institutional settings with different origins, such as top-down or bottom-up. The results indicate no clear difference in the representatives’ general satisfaction with the country-specific arrangements. Notable differences were found in specific perceptions of the clarity and purposes of the RLCCs. In both countries, the perceived rationale for the establishment of RLCCs emphasized the knowledge and expertise of the represented interest groups and authorities. Between the countries, similarities were also found in the strong links between overall satisfaction and personally perceived success and progress in communication and information exchange, i.e., deliberative processes. The capacity of the RLCCs to improve trust and acceptability with regard to different opinions was viewed as a key element underlying satisfactory RLCC activities, irrespective of the institutional settings.

This article argues that the common wisdom on the USA Patriot Act is wrong. Far from being a significant expansion of law enforcement powers online, the Patriot Act actually changed Internet surveillance law in only minor ways and added several key privacy protections. The article focuses on three specific provisions of the Patriot Act: the provision applying the pen register law to the Internet, the provisions relating to Carnivore, and the new computer trespasser exception to the Wiretap Act. By explaining the basic framework of surveillance law and applying it to the Patriot Act, the author shows how the Internet surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act updated the law in ways that both law enforcement and civil libertarians should appreciate.

Testifying before the House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee, representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) defended the Internet surveillance system code-named Carnivore as a rarely used but necessary law enforcement 'surgical' tool. Members of the subcommittee, however, were not convinced that Carnivore has the necessary checks and controls in place to prevent abuses of privacy of E-mail. Representative Mel Watt of North Carolina said, ''I have a generalized concern about the government's ability to invade the privacy of its citizens'', adding, ''there is a growing level of ...concern about 'Big Brotherism' fed by the increasing electronic world.'' Representative John Conyers of Michigan stressed, ''Constitutional rights don't end where cyberspace begins.''

Documents released to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) on 2 October 2000 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shed some new light on the technical genesis of the Carnivore Internet collection system. The release of the documents follow a lawsuit brought against the FBI by EPIC following a refusal to release them under the Freedom of Information Act. A federal judge subsequently ruled in EPIC's favor. According to the released information, the Carnivore program began as ‘Omnivore’ in late 1997. Omnivore was officially closed out on 9 June 1999 and the documents peg its development costs at US $900 000.

Since philosophers began thinking seriously about the moral status of non-human animals, many of the practices we once took for granted have come to be condemned as unjustifiable, among them our reliance on animals as a food source. While the arguments which have been adduced in support of moral vegetarianism invoke quite different (indeed incompatible) moral frameworks, they begin with a common concern for the welfare of animals. In the real world of practising vegetarians, this concern tends to be subordinated to considerations of health or food scarcity. Philosophical vegetarians need not deny, and have not denied, the importance of these further considerations. But among philosophers the case for moral vegetarianism has rested primarily on arguments from animal welfare.

Ensuring sustainable carnivore populations while simultaneously sustaining active and viable pastoral communities often creates conflicts that are difficult to resolve. This article examines how di ...

This paper explores the relationship between different types of multi-level governance systems and policy coherence (i.e., uniformity of goals and rules) through a study of the governance systems f ...