Exploring frontline work in China

This study of the state frontline workforce breaks new ground by conducting an institutional analysis of rule abidance in the People's Republic of China (PRC). We draw upon a survey (n = 1,721) of Chengguan officers, the main players in regulatory enforcement of civil law in urban China, to explore the influence of autocratic one‐party rule on the meaning of and variation in rule abidance in China. The majority of Chengguan officers are rule followers, and demographic differences show little deviation from this norm. However, institutional factors associated with one‐party rule, particularly upward accountability, the privilege of administrative rank, and unequal access to power and resources, are significant in shaping differences in rule following among Chengguan officers. We conclude with a discussion of the similarities in institutional pressures on urban regulatory policing in China and the United States.     

The New Metropolitan Police of Buenos Aires: Officers’ Shared Perceptions on Community Policing and Organizational Practices

This exploratory research surveys police officers of the city of Buenos Aires who have joined the metropolitan police force. Specifically, it examines the officers’ perceptions of community policing, reasons for joining the forces, and their beliefs concerning the integration of female police officers. Police officers reported solid knowledge about community policing and their role as its instruments. They expressed some doubt that the values of community policing are permeating throughout the organization, and that there was not enough time for officers to actually engage communities. The leadership of the department should focus efforts to ensure that community policing values are instilled throughout the organization, and providing officers with the time needed to develop community relations with the public.     

Public Accountability in Malaysia: Challenges and Critical Concerns

Despite its laudable roles in steering the process of socioeconomic development, government bureaucracy in Malaysia has not escaped public criticisms for its inefficiency, corruption, and failure to guard public interests. The media, civil society groups, intelligentsia, and the political opposition have successfully utilized the major scandals to highlight the growing public concern over the poor performance of the bureaucracy and its lack of accountability and responsiveness. This has provided impetus for the “clean and efficient government” movement initiated in the early 1980s and a series of subsequent efforts aimed at promoting appropriate values and ethics among public officials. Numerous rules and regulations have been framed, major reforms have been introduced in various spheres of administration, and an extensive program of training and bureaucratic reorientation has been undertaken. Despite all this, recent evidence suggests that the public service continues to suffer from problems of corruption and other irregularities. Obviously, the performance of numerous reforms in public service and the institutional mechanisms put in place for tackling ethical problems, though positive in general, has fallen short of expectations. This paper seeks to examine and analyze the present approach to combating corruption and promoting accountability in the Malaysian public service. In particular, it focuses on institutional mechanisms currently available and identifies and analyzes their constraints and limitations in keeping the public bureaucracy under surveillance and control.     

Developing a peace course in police studies: how a culture of peace can enhance police legitimacy in a democratic society

This paper reflects my experiences developing a course within the Criminal Justice Technology Associates of Science degree program at Valencia College that fuses topics unique to peace and police studies. The key challenge in developing this course was in confronting the paradox of the police as instruments of both peace and conflict. In dealing with this paradox, students examine the role of the police in a democratic society and the authority of the police to use coercive force. Key topics covered in this course include defining peace, the police role in peace movements, the history, structure and strategies affecting the police, causes of violence, conflict analysis and conflict intervention, and ethical foundations for peace. In addition, this course examines occupational, organizational, institutional factors that contribute to the development of a unique police subculture that values crime fighting as its core responsibility and the impact of that orientation on police attitudes and behaviors toward the public. Throughout the course, students are challenged to envision a new paradigm for policing that emphasizes a culture of peace rather than a culture of conflict.     

Performance Regimes—The Institutional Context of Performance Policies

Performance measurement, targeting, reporting and managing of public services has spread across jurisdictions in recent years. The most usual stance adopted by governments in developing performance policies has been shaped by principal-agent theory and a hierarchy of principal-agent relationships from core executive to service delivery. Such notions have been challenged from several directions, both in theory and empirically. Writers on accountability and those analyzing the “audit explosion” and the growth of “regulation inside government” have pointed to the way in which multiple actors and accountabilities have grown. Drawing on these and other sources this article develops a “performance regimes” perspective that offers a heuristic analytical framework of the main groups of institutional actors who can (but do not always) attempt to shape or steer the performance of service delivery agencies. The aim is to create a framework that can be applied comparatively to study changes in total performance regimes over time and between jurisdictions and sectors.     

Justifying Coproduced Policeability: Restrained Creativity and New Modalities of (Dis)Agreements in the Swedish Police

This article investigates the justification of coproduced policeability using the “order-of-worth” framework suggested by Boltanski and Thevénot. Building on previous research describing how tensions limit the legitimacy of public services, the analysis illustrates how persistent tensions shape the justification of coproduced policing. Drawing on both fostering and responsive modalities, reluctant adaptability allows police to cope with tense value logics and justify new coproduced solutions as legitimate means of maintaining policing practices. The analysis is based on documents and semi-structured interviews. Results imply that coproduction can result in persistent tensions that public authorities have to handle.     

URBAN MANAGEMENT AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT AS NEW INSTITUTIONS IN THE NEW UKRAINE

Local government and modern urban management techniques will play a key role in the transition of Ukraine's institutions from a communist to a free economy and society. This paper provides a historic context for this transition, discusses the problems encountered in building urban management capacities and local government institutions, and explores what it will take to achieve real change.

The paper places the problems of revitalization and rebuilding of these Ukrainian institutions in historical perspective, with special attention to inherited patterns of Soviet administrative culture. The Sovietization of urban planning and administration, and living standards and the creation of nomenklature (the main governmental “human resource”), are analyzed as the starting point for rebuilding Ukraine's local governments. The paper traces the main sources and consequences of “continuous institutional crisis,” such as distrust, corruption, and deterioration of the capabilities of the Ukrainian state. Also examined are the current effects of economic globalization on the development of local and urban governments.

Following a review of Ukrainian “path dependence” and recent difficulties in institutional building, the paper outlines the most important tasks for future development and an agenda for Ukraine's “institutional entrepreneurs.” The paper emphasizes that it is vital to create a professional, rule-based bureaucracy and merit-based municipal civil service.     

Representative bureaucracy and impartial policing

Representative bureaucracy theory expects minority bureaucrats to advance the interests of minority citizens. Yet, little attention has been given to the variation in the acceptability, incentives and risks of representation across bureaucratic domains. Analysis of over two million police vehicle stops from four different US departments reveals that African American police officers do not treat African Americans preferentially, yet they mitigate existing racial disparities in policing. Compared with White officers, African Americans seem less disposed to use their discretion. They are disinclined to search drivers, yet inclined to cite them, displaying comparatively low disparities across social groups. These findings extend to pure traffic violations, and are robust to entropy balancing reweighting. We provisionally attribute African American police officers' impartial policing style to their compelling need to display their performance, and avoid blame, amidst intra‐organizational pressures and risks ensuing from the political salience of the police's clash with minority communities.     

An unlikely bulwark of Sovietness: cross-border travel and Soviet patriotism in Western Ukraine, 1956–1985

Focusing on the development of travel between the borderlands of Ukraine and Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe, this article explores what it meant to be Soviet outside the Russian core of the USSR between the mid-1950s and the mid-1980s. The cautious opening of the Soviet border was part of a larger attempt to find fresh sources of popular support and enthusiasm for the regime's “communist” project. Before the Prague Spring of 1968 in particular, official policies and narratives of travel thus praised local inhabitants who crossed the Soviet border for supposedly overcoming age-old hatreds to build a brighter future in Eastern Europe. By the 1970s, however, smuggling and cultural consumption discredited the idea of “internationalist friendship.” This encouraged residents of Ukraine to speak and write about the continuing importance of the Soviet border. The very idea of Sovietness was defined in national terms, as narratives of travel emphasized that Soviet citizens were inherently different from ethno-national groups in the people's democracies. Eastern Europe thus emerged as an “other” that highlighted the Soviet character of territories incorporated into the USSR after 1939, helping to obscure western Ukraine's troubled past and leading to the emergence of new social hierarchies in the region.     

The “Rape of Europe”: 2016 New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Cologne in hegemonic discourse of Russian media

The article deals with the Russian media coverage of sexual assaults against women during the 2016 New Year's Eve celebrations in Cologne. The authors examine it in the frame of discourse of “Gayropa” that represents the EU via changes in gender order of the West European societies. The pro-Kremlin media coverage of the “Rape of Europe” contributes to positioning Russia in the world, maintaining power legitimacy in the country, and supporting gender order in Russian society. The media discourse treats it as an evidence of decline of the European civilization.     

Post-Soviet Civil Society Development in the Russian Federation: The Impact of the NGO Law

The passing of the Russian NGO Law in mid-2006 set clear parameters for Russian NGO activity and civil society development. In this paper we assess the impact of the NGO Law on both NGOs and Russian civil society. Our findings illustrate that the NGO Law has led to a reduction in NGO activity and curtailment of civil society development. We conclude that Russian civil society appears to be dominated by groups funded and thus controlled by the state. This has implications for Russia's on-going democratic development.     

Deepwater or Troubled Water? Principal–Agent Theory and Performance-Based Contracting in the Coast Guard’s Deepwater Modernization Program

In the mid-1990s, the United States Coast Guard began planning a modernization effort known as the Deepwater program to replace an aging inventory of cutters, aircraft, and small boats. This effort involved a consortium of corporations to develop a “system of systems” to meet performance-based requirements and build the new equipment. This article examines the Deepwater program through the lens of multilayered principal–agent theory and evaluates the performance-based contracting (PBC) method used to alleviate strains linked to accountability from the principal–agent relationship. The findings help better understand the dilemmas prescribed from multilayered principal–agent theory and PBC by illustrating the accountability issues faced by smaller organizations when engaging in complex, large-scale procurement.     

Prince Adam Czartoryski as a liminal figure in the development of modern nationalism in Eastern Europe at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

In Polish history, Prince Adam Czartoryski is almost universally regarded as one of the most important Polish statesmen and patriots of the first half of the nineteenth century. In Russian history, on the other hand, he is remembered chiefly as the Foreign Minister of the Russian Empire, and a close personal friend of Tsar Alexander I. How did Czartoryski reconcile his commitment to the Polish nation with his service to the Russian Empire (a state which occupied most of Poland)? This paper will attempt to place Prince Adam's friendship with Alexander, and his service to Imperial Russia, in the broader context of national identity formation in early nineteenth-century eastern Europe. It will be argued that the idea of finding a workable relationship between Poland and Russia, even within the framework of a single state for a “Slavic nation,” was an important and forgotten feature of Polish political thought at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By answering the question of precisely how Czartoryski was able to negotiate between the identities of a “Polish patriot” and “Russian statesman,” the paper will shed light on the broader development of national identity in early nineteenth-century Poland and Russia.     

Preventing Political Violence in Britain: An Evaluation of over Forty Years of Undercover Policing of Political Groups Involved in Protest

This article offers a first academic evaluation of the Special Demonstration Squad and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, two British undercover police units working for the Metropolitan Police Service at different times between 1968 and 2011. It provides a historical overview of their infiltration of political groups involved in protest for the purpose of gathering criminal and political intelligence aimed at preventing violence, public disorder, and subversion. It discusses the controversies surrounding these units, and the related institutional responses, and offers an attempt at understanding their operations within the remit of intelligence-led policing and against a political culture that prioritizes action over inaction in reducing risks and threats to the State and society.     

Sovereignty,networks, and norms

The literature on collective memories in the Baltic states often stresses the irreconcilable division between Russian and Baltic official interpretations of the Second World War. This paper seeks to challenge this popular notion of two polemic collective memories – “Latvian” and “Russian”. While there is evidence that Latvia's Russian-speakers are heavily influenced by Russian cultural and political discourses, I will argue that the actual positions taken up by Russian-speakers are more nuanced than a crude Latvian–Russian dichotomy would suggest.

Based on survey data collected at the site of the 2011 Victory Day celebrations in Riga, this paper points to the germane existence of a partial “democratization of history” among Latvia's Russian-speakers, typified by an increasing willingness to countenance and take stock of alternative views of history. Through an examination of the data it will be argued that such tentative steps towards a democratization of history are most visible among the younger cohort of Russian-speakers, whose collective memory-myths have been tempered by their dual habitation of the Latvian, as well as Russian, mythscapes. In order to more fully understand this process both bottom-up and top-down pressures will be examined.     

Counterterrorism,Community Policing and the Flags Protests: An Examination of Police Perceptions of Northern Ireland's Operation Dulcet

In 2013 Northern Ireland (NI) witnessed the most protracted period of public-disorder ever seen in the United Kingdom. After Belfast City Council voted to fly the Union flag in-line with the manner adopted in the rest of the United Kingdom, loyalist protestors blocked roads, attacked offices, and held marches through Belfast city center. During what became known as Operation Dulcet, police had to respond to the protests and violence, mindful of existing tensions in NI. This article reports on data collected from interviews conducted with officers involved in the policing of these events. The findings demonstrate that the police response was understood using narratives concerning the primacy of human rights, a focus on perceived proportionality, and ultimately, related to the potential violence linked to historic conceptions of community divisions in NI.     

Comparative anti-corruption policy: the american,soviet and russian cases

In light of significant conceptual and methodological difficulties that face comparative corruption research, we propose to treat comparative anti-corruption policy as worthy of study in its own right. By using measures of enforcement activity as evidence of anti-corruption, rather than flawed proxy measures of corruption, we endeavor to surmount some of obstacles to comparing radically different political systems. We compare anti-corruption activity in the US and the USSR and elaborate three theoretical perspectives-emphasizing political, institutional, and symbolic factors--and show how each might improve our understanding of anti-corruption policy in the two nations. By applying these three frameworks to the Russian republic, we assess anti-corruption policy in an unsettled, emerging political system and suggest that the dynamics that underlie Russia's anti-corruption policy will more closely resemble US policy than was the case in the USSR.     

Anti-corruption or accountability? International efforts in post-conflict Liberia

This paper analyses anti-corruption efforts in post-conflict Liberia. It highlights citizens’ views on the definition of corruption and argues that, in the past, anti-corruption efforts have often focused on institution building and formal justice mechanisms without sufficient understanding of accountability dynamics on the ground. Anti-corruption approaches in Liberia have only nominally examined whether there is a shared understanding of what ‘corruption’ is and why it is regarded as a problem. The paper examines the social norms and perceptions that underlie understandings of the term corruption. It argues that the international community may have overlooked the fact that ‘corruption’ has become an all-encompassing term that masks a myriad of differing priorities and concerns. The authors posit that ‘accountability’ may be a more useful lens for those actors hoping to improve governance in these contexts.     

War of words: the impact of Russian state television on the Russian Internet

How effective is Russian state television in framing the conflict in Ukraine that began with the Euromaidan protests and what is its impact on Russian Internet users? We carried out a content analysis of Dmitrii Kiselev's “News of the Week” show, which allowed us to identify the two key frames he used to explain the conflict – World War II-era fascism and anti-Americanism. Since Kiselev often reduces these frames to buzzwords, we were able to track the impact of these words on Internet users by examining search query histories on Yandex and Google and by developing quantitative data to complement our qualitative analysis. Our findings show that much of what state media produces is not effective, but that the “fascist” and anti-American frames have had lasting impacts on Russian Internet users. We argue that it does not make sense to speak of competition between a “television party” and an “Internet party” in Russia since state television has a strong impact in setting the agenda for the Internet and society as a whole. Ultimately, the relationship between television and the Internet in Russia is a continual loop, with each affecting the other.     

Patterns of Enterpreneurship: A Study of Gender Training Frameworks for Officers of the Indian Administrative Service

Abstract

The awareness of women as a category of development promoted the establishment of Women in Development (WID) organizations but these remain on the peripheries of mainstream development concerns. This research examines the entrepreneurial roles of Indian Administrative officers for gender aware planning and implementation of gender aware development planning. The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is a critical stakeholder in the innovation process for gender aware development planning. This article reviews the introductory training program of all IAS candidates to establish the institutional culture and organizational procedures describing the audience of the IAS organization. The institutional culture and procedures of the IAS perpetuate a gender bias for WID and not Gender and Development (GAD) programs. Bureaucratic advocates for this type of development planning hold conflicting roles within government agencies as system maintainers and policy advocates. This study reviews the content and implications of three different gender-training frameworks dominate in the field: gender analysis, gender-planning, and social relations. Comparing these frameworks provides insights into the positioning of IAS officers and departments as possible agents of innovation for gender aware planning and policy. The range of innovations vary from acquiring skills for job performance, or creating separate agencies and new institutions to assessment of entrenched attitudes and procedures reinforcing gender inequity within the agency. Implicit in each framework are different views about IAS officers as planners and administrators.