Panopticon, Inc.: Jeremy Bentham, contract management, and (neo)liberal penality

This essay revisits Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, perhaps the foundational figure of the study of the prison, to recover a dimension of the project wholly omitted in Michel Foucault’s canonical reading in Discipline and Punish. Nowhere does Foucault mention Bentham’s insistence that the prison be run by a private contractor. With Bentham's penal theory characteristically derived from his account of human psychology, the contract and private profit are essential to the functioning of the Panopticon, because they align the jailer's duty with their self-interest. Bentham built profit and market imperatives into the fabric of the Panopticon, always envisioned as a place of economic production. The contract-Panopticon and its political economy are vital antecedents to the neoliberal penality theorized by Loïc Wacquant and Bernard E. Harcourt, even as they problematize the statism inherited from Foucault and the chronological implications of the prefix “neo.” Bentham was only the theorist of a marketization of governance pervasive in his own time and ever since, raising the question of whether punishment has ever been a purely state function.

Conteúdo Local nos contratos de exploração e produção de petróleo e gás natural

<p>Local Content in oil and natural gas exploration and production contracts</p><p> </p><p>O presente trabalho tem por objetivo analisar a exigência de contratação em percentuais mínimos de fornecedores brasileiros advinda das cláusulas de Conteúdo Local nos contratos de exploração e produção de petróleo e gás natural. Para tanto, examina-se em que consistem as obrigações de Conteúdo Local, bem como sua natureza jurídica. Em seguida, o artigo investiga os casos em que as cláusulas de Conteúdo Local se mostram ineficazes e o cumprimento dos percentuais ofertados quando da apresentação das respectivas propostas se afigura inexigível, destacando sempre que a existência da obrigação imposta pelas cláusulas de Conteúdo Local é condicionada à verificação concreta do seu suporte fático. Finalmente, o trabalho se debruça sobre a possibilidade de aplicação de sanções ao particular contratante nos casos em que a incidência das cláusulas de Conteúdo Local resta afastada.</p><p> </p><p>This article aims to analyze the requirement of contracting minimum percentages from Brazilian suppliers arising from the Local Content clauses in oil and natural gas exploration and production contracts. To this end, the paper examines what constitutes the Local Content obligations, as well as their legal nature. The article then goes on to investigate cases in which Local Content clauses are ineffective and when compliance with the percentages offered when proposals were submitted looks unenforceable, emphasizing that the existence of the obligation imposed by the Local Content clauses is conditional on effective verification. Finally, the work focuses on the possibility of applying sanctions to the private contractor in cases of non-compliance.</p>

PROBLEMS OF FORMATION OF INCOME AND EXPENSES OF PRIVATE CONTRACTORS AS SUBJECTS OF INDEPENDENT PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY

Introduction. The need to set up a private enforcement institute arose from the problem of enforcement of court decisions. The activities of state executors are clearly regulated, have experience and achievements. A private contractor is authorized by the state to carry out enforcement activities, but from an economic point of view, he is a self-employed person, which means that he is financially interested in the results of his work. The economic aspect of private contractor activity is not well understood to date. Methods. The study is based on the use of the historical and comparative method in determining the prerequisites for establishing an institute of private performers in Ukraine and in the world. A generalization method was used to determine general properties in the taxation of private contractors. The efficiency of the work and the feasibility of introducing a “private” element in the enforcement of court decisions was proved by the method of analysis. The method of grouping was used to determine the taxation base for the performance of private contractors. Results. The organizational and legal aspects of the activity of private contractors have been determined. The economic advantages and disadvantages of introducing the Institute of Private Performers are presented. The procedure for recognition of income and formation of costs of private contractors is outlined. It is proved inadmissible to identify the concepts of “costs of enforcement proceedings” and “costs of private executors”. The necessity of accounting and control of results of activity of private contractors is substantiated. Discussion. Prospects for further researches will be to develop recommendations for accounting for deposit accounts; accounts intended to be credited to enforcement proceedings; accounts intended to account for the principal and additional remuneration of private contractors; payroll calculations; payments with budget for taxes, fees, other required payments private artist revenue and expenses, etc. Keywords: enforcement proceedings, self-employed entities, private contractor, remuneration of private contractor, costs of enforcement proceedings, costs of private contractor, income of private contractor.

The Demise of the Revenue Farm System in the Federated Malay States

Within the space of a few years a remarkable transformation took place in the taxation system of the Federated Malay States (FMS). Up until the early 1900s the British administration of these states relied, as had the sultans and chiefs from whom the British had taken control in the 1870s, on the revenue farm system for collecting many taxes. Most revenue farms were constituted according to the standard pattern found elsewhere in Southeast Asia at this time and in Europe up to the eighteenth century. The government granted a private contractor, the revenue farmer, the exclusive right to collect a certain tax in a specified area for a set number of years in return for a fixed rent, and the farmer kept for himself any money which he collected over and above what he owed the government in rent. A great variety of taxes were collected in this way. There were farms to collect the export duty on atap, firewood, timber, and rattan; most towns had market farms; and in Perak there was even a ‘farm of river turtle eggs’.