Toddlers may succeed in eliciting a punitive response.

Canon Ray Cleary, director of Anglicare in Victoria, said a punitive response to divorce would be "out of touch with the realities of the modern world".

Mr. Clinton would allow states to cut off extra benefits to mothers who give birth while on welfare - a punitive response to a nearly nonexistent problem.

As industries invest, one of the key impediments is that investment in new technology can trigger a punitive response from regulators.

This is the Iranian government's punitive response to his activities on behalf of the Green Movement.

"In no way do those two isolated instances merit such a punitive response," he said.

But as collective sentiments change, it is 'human criminality', comprising only offences against other people, which shocks collective sentiments and attracts a punitive response.

These drew harsh punitive responses such as the burning of entire villages by government troops and militias, which had been concentrated in Lower Canada to deal with the crisis.

The interpretation, as Mr. Coop sees it, is that any degree of defiance elicits a punitive response.

Erratic or punitive responses to global financial vagaries by the Central Bank of Argentina itself often left the Argentine economy bearing the brunt.