Book presentation

Level of compliance – one of the most important prerequisites of good governance – varies widely across countries of the Global North and the Global South. Acts of non-compliance such as electoral irregularities, dubious deals between private and public sectors, the questionable role of the justice systems and financial scandals, have become an omnipresent reality of contemporary life.

Despite vast differences in their levels of economic growth, social development, institutional complexity and stringency of regulation, countries in Asia, Europe and South America each have their grey fringes of non-compliance in political and market transactions. The volume has brought together a number of case studies of deviant behavior in the political, juridical and corporate fields, in several countries of South East Asia, India, France, Germany, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia, within a common framework.

Instead of approaching such behaviour necessarily from the high moral ground of legality and illegality, the  essays dissect non-compliance analytically. They argue that, while from an ethical point of view criminalization of politics and all forms of corrupt dealings in the economic arena deserve to be exposed by all means, from a sociological point of view one needs to probe deeper into the dynamic that leads to such non-compliance with the law in the first place. They aim not so much to high-light non-compliance but to show-case the duality of political and corporate agency—one face of which represents the tendency of actors to chase after their own goals and to try to win at any cost — and the other face which is turned towards regulatory institutions.

Thanks to the participation of specialists in party and campaign financing, democracy transition, consolidation and deepening and sociology of organizations, organizational deviance, corruption and useful illegality, the volume has been able to generate new comparative knowledge and policy analysis based on “best practices” that can contribute to reform, aimed at bringing agencies and practices connected to useful illegality back into the academic study of compliance. The first of its kind to bridge three continents with a unified, interdisciplinary approach, drawing on Sociology, Law, Criminology, Political Science and real life experience of practitioners, the book offers important insights for academic research into non-compliance as well as some useful lessons to those whose interests lie mostly in public policy.

Programme

Join us for a presentation and comments by the book's editors and authors, followed by an open discussion:

Aurel Croissant (Heidelberg University)

Vanessa Elias (Federal University of ABC, Brazil)

Alexander Fischer (Jindal University, India)

Subrata Mitra (Heidelberg University)

Markus Pohlmann (Heidelberg University)

Jivanta Schoettli (Dublin City University, Ireland)

Elizangela Valarini (Heidelberg University)

The event will be held in English.

Hybrid format, you are welcome to join us online or in person.

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Photo credits:
Campus Bergheim, heidICON