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Insurance is a dynamic business highly affected by the environment it operates in. Alongside the practice of insurance, come principles on which the business of insurance is based. One of the principles, that is not short of controversy, is the doctrine of utmost good faith which requires full disclosure of material facts by the contracting parties. The author, in this chapter, explored the need for change in the regulation of this insurance principle and discussed the drivers behind these changes and the commensurate effect on the practice of insurance. The author delved into case studies, practices and literature and traced back to the origins of the long-standing principle of utmost good faith. This principle is one on which the acceptance (or otherwise) and premium of an insurance contract is based and through which certain factors and developments in the industry have led to a major reform in some jurisdiction.

The author discussed the development and drivers leading to reform and concluded that reform is ultimately the result of public outcry, through individual cases heard predominantly in court, a well-established reform committee, the socio-political environment of that country and the advent of technology. Moreover, although, different countries have their own jurisdictions, laws and regulations as well as market practices and international trade have made it imperative to have common technical practices between market players especially in insurance, which depends on the spread of risks between countries internationally. Smooth insurance business can only be established if this reform is harmonised between jurisdictions.

This chapter discusses the extension of legal equality between male and female citizens in four states in North Africa – Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria – through one specific lens: A married woman's legal capacity to initiate and obtain divorce without the husband's consent. Building on the works of Stein Rokkan and Reinhard Bendix on the expansion of citizenship to the ‘lower classes’, it is argued that amendments in divorce law by introducing in-court divorce for women, in addition to out-of-court divorce, is a significant institutional change that extends legal equality between men and women. The introduction of in-court divorce expands female citizenship by bolstering woman's juridical autonomy and capacity in state law. Changes in divorce laws are thus part of state centralization by means of standardizing rules that regulate family law through public administrative institutions rather than religious organizations. Two questions are addressed: First, how did amendments in divorce laws occur after independence? Second, in which ways did women's bolstered legal capacity in divorce have a spill over effect on reforms in other patriarchal state laws? Based on observations on sequences of change in four states in North Africa, it is argued that amendments that equalize between men and women in divorce should be seen as a key driver for reforms in other state laws, that reduce legal inequality between male and female citizens. In all four states, women's citizenship was extended in nationality law and criminal law after amendments in divorce law gave women unilateral legal power to exit a marital relationship.

The object of this research is the reconstruction of the existing legal response by European Union states to the phenomenon of immigration. It seeks to analyse the process of conferral of protection.

One main dimension is selected and discussed: the case law of the national courts. The study focuses on the legal status of immigrants resulting from the intervention of these national courts.

The research shows that although the courts have conferred an increasing protection on immigrants, this has not challenged the fundamental principle of the sovereignty of the states to decide, according to their discretionary prerogatives, which immigrants are allowed to enter and stay in their territories. Notwithstanding the differences in the general constitutional and legal structures, the research also shows that the courts of the three countries considered – France, Germany and Spain – have progressively moved towards converging solutions in protecting immigrants.

The research contributes to a better understanding of the different legal orders analysed.

This chapter examines the rise and fall of the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations (Dunlop Commission) in the early 1990s. It uses the events surrounding the Commission to provide an insight into the dynamics of the struggle over federal labor law reform. The inability of the Dunlop Commission to get labor and management representatives to agree on proposals for labor law reform demonstrated, yet again, that employer opposition is the greatest obstacle to the protection of organizing rights and modernization of labor law. For the nation's major management associations, labor law reform is a life and death issue, and nothing is more important to them than defeating revisions to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) intended to strengthen organizing rights. The failure of labor law reform in the 1990s also demonstrated that the labor movement would never win reform by means of an “inside the beltway” legislative campaign – designed to push reform through the US Senate – because the principal employer organizations would always exercise more influence in Congress. Instead, unions must engage with public opinion, and convince union and nonunion members about the importance of reform. Thus far, however, they lack an effective language with which to do this.

Over the past 20 years, external auditing activities and practices in Vietnam have developed quickly. An important milestone is the first Law on External Audit No. 67/2011/QH12 which has been passed by the National Assembly of Vietnam on 29 March 2011. The purpose of this paper is to understand the perceived motivations in regard to the introduction of the Law on External Audit, through the eyes of various key stakeholders. There has been genuine public interest concerns regarding audit quality in Vietnam as prior academic research has indicated, and this is the first study to examine whether the new audit reforms where introduced specifically to deal with those concerns.

Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with 45 key stakeholders during 2014 in both Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

The study finds that the Law on External Audit was introduced because it holds the highest form of regulatory authority in Vietnam, and the lower level Decrees that existed before the law did not even detail the audit firms’ responsibilities resulting in low audit quality. Also, the new Law was introduced to add more credibility and trust in the external audit function in Vietnam, and to reduce unfair price competition. However, some of our findings indicate that the Governments’ motivations were not all purely public interest related. A theoretical framework is developed to evaluate whether these reforms are substantive enough in nature to effect public confidence in reported financial data and audits.

External auditing plays a crucial role in any market-based economy. In a developing economy, audit quality is often perceived to be lower than in a developed economy. Therefore, it is not uncommon to observe governments in developing economies producing tighter regulations for the auditing and assurance market to help attract more foreign investment and to establish credibility and more trust. In Vietnamese context, the current study conveys that the new audit reforms not only were introduced with genuine public interest concerns but also were a mechanism to protect the government’s interests.

Following China entered the World Trade Organisation in November 2001, attention has been paid worldwide to the current Chinese legal system, political policies, and the development of economic reform. Recent debates on corporate governance in China have become a global topic of interest. The corporate governance reform is now the centre of the enterprise reform. This paper evaluates the development of corporate governance reform in China and identifies its changes in legislation on corporate control. This paper provides evidence to show that China has been making significant progress in the development of corporate governance reform. It concludes that China has established a fundamental legal framework for corporate governance. The changes in regulations on corporate control indicate that the development of a more sophisticated corporate governance system is under way. However, corporate governance reform in China is still at an early stage of development. The existing problems are still significant. Laws and legal institutions have experienced difficulties keeping up with the changes that have been taking place in China. The rights of selecting management of state‐owned enterprise still remain in the hands of the state. The reform of the banking system lags behind the development of the market economy and state‐owned banks are still under government's control. The paper argues that in Chinese context as far as the rights of selecting management remain in state's hand, the independent board of directors will have less power to achieve the goals in corporate control. Thus the agency problems will not be solved, and it is very difficult to excise and protect minority shareholders' interest. In today's Chinese market the corporate governance cannot provide the protection of minority investors' interests. This paper also argues that it is very dangerous for individual investors to invest in the Chinese market and they have to bear higher risks. This paper suggests that increasing the Sophistication of the corporate governance system of both internal and external control is the key for the Chinese market. This is because the Chinese context is very complicated. There are so many regulations and laws applied in business practice. Different companies and enterprises apply different laws. This paper points out when a national corporate governance system is established it should serve the whole economic market. Thus the further reform of state‐owned enterprises and also the banking system should take place so that China can build up a real economic market structure according to international regulations. This paper also suggests that in the long‐term, building up a cultural background for applying corporate governance system is very important in Chinese society. Improving the culture in the social environment could help to improve the corporate governance in business practices.

Recent events of police misconduct and corruption produced widespread calls for law enforcement reform. Reformers apply one of four models, each of which predicts successful reform, exclusive of other models. Each model requires substantial theoretical elaboration in order to permit rigorous testing of model effectiveness. Offers model elaboration and predicts that the models will be more effective to the extent that they operate interactively.

The law and guidance concerning the social care of adults are a mess. More than 30 statutes and guidance documents deal with this area, many of which overlap or contradict each other, some dating back five decades. Because of this, the Law Commission has been asked to review the law and propose changes, which is, as the Law Society Gazette has put it, ‘the most radical shake‐up of adult social care in 60 years’ (Rayner, 2010). It is estimated that such legislation would affect 1.8 million people and six million carers (Brindle, 2010). The consultation document was published in February 2010 following a scoping exercise, and the closure date for responses was the 1st July 2010. The hope is that the consultation exercise will result in a response next year and a Bill drafted by the summer of 2012. In this article, we review the background to the consultation, and explore the Law Commission's proposals for reform. We examine the issues with particular reference to the readership of this journal, and make suggestions for change. We have also submited this article to the Law Commission as a response to the consultation document.

Drawing from an interest in the changing Indonesian political and regulatory history, the purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of the role that accounting reform can play in nurturing, or failing to nurture, a more dialogic form of accounting in a local Indonesian municipality.

To collect the data, the authors undertook a case study of a local municipality and drew from patterns found in Indonesia’s long colonial history. Data were acquired from official and publicly available documents and interviews with 29 key figures, including those involved in formulating and disseminating laws and also those affected by the accounting reforms from 1998 to 2009. Document collection and interviews were conducted at national and local levels.

This study shows that Indonesia has undertaken significant economic and political reforms for the intended purposes of fostering democracy, strengthening accountability, and creating transparency in relation to public sector practices. As part of these reforms, accrual accounting is now mandatory, independent audit is conducted, and disclosure is required by Government offices at central and local levels. Nonetheless, drawing from dialogic accounting principles, this study demonstrates the limitations of legislation and regulation in countering patterns that have long been laid down in history. Essentially, there is limited opportunity to question the elements of these reforms, and the study has also found that centralizing forces remain to serve vested interests. The root of the problem may lie in traditions of central control which have played out in how a dialogic form of accounting has failed to emerge from these important accounting reforms.

The findings of this study should be understood from historical, political, and cultural backgrounds of the site of the study.

The implications of the findings should be taken into account by public sector policy makers, particularly in emerging economies – where political realities, economic, social, political, and cultural backgrounds set different historical patterns and result in unique circumstances that may tend to retain traditions of the past even under rules and regulations of the present.

A key contribution of this study is to show how the political traditions of a nation can permeate and divert the intent of, in this case, engaging a broader public in discourse about accounting reform in the public sector. In addition, this study also provides an understanding of public sector reform in the context of a diverse and unsettled nation which has been long subject to colonial, top-led, and military leadership. The findings demonstrate complexities and unintended outcomes that can emerge in public sector accounting reform and how, in this case, they appear to be influenced by historical traditions of centralized control.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which these reforms address the limitations of Saudi Arabia’s previous investment framework. Long viewed as a hostile environment in which to do business, the Saudi Government has enacted a broad sweep of measures aimed at restoring investor confidence in central aspects of the country’s evolving private law framework.

This paper offers a timely assessment of the raft of foreign investment reforms, both legislative and regulatory, that have been introduced in Saudi Arabia over the last decade.

The paper will proceed by outlining the perceived failings of the old investment regime before going on to reforms.

It will consider the remaining obstacles to the flow of foreign investment in Saudi Arabia in the context of the dual forces that have historically defined the Kingdom’s ambivalent investment law regime.