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As the forces of globalisation gather pace, national economics are becoming more internationalised and interdependent, and the power of individual nation‐states is being diminished in relative terms. Increasingly, individual countries are less able to control their national economics. One consequence of these developments is that regulatory structures and processes are becoming more internationalised and a variety of modes of global governance is emerging. These shifts in regulatory power are apparent in the growing influence of bodies such as the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS); the Financial Action Task Force (FATF); the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO); the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Similar shifts are facilitated through networks of specific agreements between professional and industry associations, and state‐sanctioned self‐regulatory organisations (in particular through Memoranda of Understanding — MoUs). However, although there is a trend towards growing regulatory harmonisation, different national and cultural influences impact upon national systems of regulation, and in international contexts these values may conflict. Given these developments, it is becoming increasingly important to understand how regulatory structures and standards function in different countries. Two elements that are constant in nearly all jurisdictions are the acknowledgement of public‐interest concerns in regulatory systems and the need for compliance with regulatory standards. This paper considers the issue of regulating against white‐collar crime in the financial services sector in the contexts of promoting regulatory compliance and the representation of notions of the public interest.

On 4th January, 1996, Mr Michael Lawrence was dismissed from his position as chief executive of the Stock Exchange, instigating a wave of media interest in the decision‐making process of the Exchange. Generally, this media interest was not especially flattering to the Board of the Exchange; and there were wider concerns about the damage that may have been caused to the reputation and credibility of the City of London itself:

This paper surveys the historical development of financial services regulations in the UK, especially the social conditions and power relations that have shaped the evolution of British financial markets. The analysis specifically focuses upon the role of special interest groups and how they have influenced regulatory innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to provide some reflections on the Australian experience of ‘Big Bang’ regulatory reform. The analysis is confined to the recent legislation passed on 1st July, 1998 and the reform processes that fuelled these regulatory innovations.

Scandals are a recurring feature of UK financial services and they were probably more common in the 1840s than they are in the 1990s. There is no overwhelming evidence that general financial practice is less ethical than it was and it appears more likely that ethical standards have risen. They are certainly higher than in the Victorian era, for example the ‘railway mania’ of 1845—46 which structurally established large‐scale financial fraud in Britain. During this period, hundreds of railway schemes were launched as a source of enormous fees for promoters, lawyers, engineers and surveyors. Many were never intended to be built, with some promoters (once they had accumulated substantial funds from investors) actively lobbying for their Railway Bills to be rejected by Parliament. However, this relative rise in the ethical standards of contemporary general financial practice will be of little comfort to the thousands of angry investors who have been mis‐sold pensions, or have been victims of modern scandals perpetrated by Peter Clowes, Roger Levitt or Robert Maxwell. Their anger is understandable because modern society expects increasing levels of security from its industries and institutions, and regulation is the medium for achieving this. Despite general trends towards deregulation, in financial services increasing regulation is inevitable, and politically desirable, because of the rising complexity and elaborate nature of exchange relationships. It is the state which is taking on the role of guaranteeing the security of those relationships. It is this guarantor role of the state which ensures that when scandals happen, the anger of victims is not merely directed at the fraudsters, but also at the regulatory system and the government which is responsible for that system.

Most people in Western countries are more likely to associate the term underground banking with an automatic teller machine in a subway station, than with complex infrastructures of financial remittance that may be utilised either to by‐pass completely conventional banking facilities and processes, or else to connect with those same conventional banking facilities and processes only at selected points, at selected times and selected places. However, the low public profile of underground banking is in contrast to the increasingly high priority that governments, financial regulators and law enforcement agencies are giving to efforts to counter the facilitative role that underground banking can play in the activities of money launderers, organised crime, terrorist groups and tax evaders. Underground banking systems are playing an increasingly important role in the burgeoning tide of laundered money that is projected by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to be equivalent to 2–5 per cent of global GDP with organised crime groups estimated to be grossing more than US$1.5trn a year. However, there is significant variation regarding guesstimates of the scale of the activities of organised crime and money laundering in general. For example, Walker applies a ‘crime‐economic model’ upon data collated from international databases and his model estimates a global money laundering total of $2.85trn per year, with these flows heavily concentrated in North America and Europe. These types of disparity in assessment are inevitable until a great deal more data is generated regarding money laundering and other sectors of alternative and/or illegal economies. Walker stresses that his results are very much interim, but they suggest some interesting patterns. For example: of totals of money laundered globally, the USA was the origin of more than 46 per cent and the destination of more than 18 per cent; and on a matrix of attractiveness of jurisdictions to money launderers Luxembourg ranked first with a score of 686, followed by the USA (634) and Switzerland (617), with the traditional homes of underground banking systems such as Pakistan (Hawala system) and China (Fei Chien) ranking in the lowest category (0–9). The methodological problems of measurement are especially acute regarding underground banking systems due to their intrinsically low levels of public visibility. Indeed, many of the dilemmas associated with underground banking are reproduced in other issues of conventional banking, financial regulation, law enforcement and economic governance. It is these dilemmas that are the core focus of this paper.

This chapter locates our book in social science debates and critiques challenging ontological and epistemological assumptions underpinning researching approaches emanating from the global north. This is an important contextualising move, given that these debates have surfaced crucial understandings about the dangers of unquestioned assumptions underpinning researching approaches in intercultural and cross-cultural contexts. The chapter outlines how practice architectures, the key theoretical lens employed in this book, have attempted to counter these exclusions. It focusses on the theory’s emergence from the relational (political and material) work of the pedagogy, education, and praxis (PEP) network. This historicising move is part of our shared authorial commitment to rendering visible the taken-for-granted assumptions underpinning researching approaches, including those, such as practice architectures theory, that have a shared commitment to critical educational praxis. The final section of the chapter considers the possibilities and limitations of practice architectures theory as a means of challenging taken-for-granted ontological and epistemological assumptions of research and researching practices.

The Lesley University PhD program in Educational Studies offers a new specialization in adult learning and development. This hybrid, interdisciplinary degree is geared toward mid-career professionals in higher education, community services, non-formal adult learning, and a number of other fields. Since 2008, the program has graduated 36 students whose dissertations have a strong focus on practitioner research. This case study covers the planning process of an interdisciplinary faculty team responding to the need for educators to teach and research adult learners. The guiding philosophy of adult learning and the delivery method of this competency-based curriculum are explained. Students present a research interest upon application and begin to develop a dissertation question in their first year. They attend a weeklong campus residency every semester where they work on competencies through workshops and lectures. This is followed by online course completion in dialogue with faculty mentors and peers. Students finish 45 credits before beginning the dissertation. The importance of a cohort learning community, advising as pedagogy, online support, library resources, qualifying examination, pilot study, and dissertation preparation are discussed. Data gathered from a current self-study highlight both the strengths and the challenges posed by this unique program.

There are increasing levels of concern in many countries about the threat posed by organised crime to established political structures and processes. This analysis considers some of the issues associated with the political influence of organised crime.