Defeat in Iraq: The Challenges for Obama and the Region

Abstract

Though community policing is widely promoted by donors and criticized by academics, there has been little research on its practice in Africa. This essay examines one of the main elements of community policing, namely community forums, in Freetown, Sierra Leone. They were examined from the point of view of the police, Partnership Board executives and local communities. The triangulation of response provided an evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses. Positively they have improved communication between police and communities and provided intelligence, investigation, intervention, arrest and dispute resolution. Negatively they are elite dominated and most of the activities, initiatives and even finance come from the community. Despite the difficulties, the Partnership Boards are universally valued and are not seen as unwelcome foreign imports.     

On the Spatial-temporal Diffusion of Community Based Policing from Japan to Peninsula Southeast Asia: The Case of Timor-Leste

ABSTRACT

This article traces the legacies and variances of ‘community based policing’ in Timor-Leste, and inquires about historical trajectories and cross-cultural sociopolitical influences which forged and determined the idea of policing in Timor-Leste. By drawing on diffusion theory, the article investigates the changing interpretations and transformations of ‘community based policing’ from the Imperial Japanese koban policing, to its Indonesian babinsa- and bimpolda-variant through to the current Timorese ofisial polísia suku approach. It delivers a historically based explanation for the difficulties and challenges of implementing an approach to ‘community based policing’ in Timor-Leste during UNTAET and following missions of the United Nations.     

上海社区警务建设刍议

上海公安机关在实施现代警务机制战略中以新一轮社区警务改革为核心,形成了警种联动、警社合作、警民沟通、外部考评四大工作机制,特别是在加强实体及网上警务室建设、推进警社合作、引入外部考评机制方面,为新时期密切警群联系、构建和谐警民关系奠定了坚实基础。     

我国社区警务发展趋势及改革对策

我国社区警务战略实施10年以来,取得了一定成绩,然而在近几年实践工作中,社区警务工作呈现出诸多新特点,制约着社区警务的发展.根据我国社区警务的发展趋势,结合实际,分析影响我国社区警务发展的因素,并提出相应的改革措施,对创新社会管理,维护社会治安具有重要意义.     

Enhancing Space Security by Improving Stakeholder Cooperation

Improving security in space requires the establishment of a consensus among actors on what it means to be safe in space, what kinds of activities should be allowed, and what activities should be prohibited. However, a necessary precursor to the emergence of such consensus is enhanced cooperation among space stakeholders. As of today, leading space actors are moving in often contradictory directions. In addition, the various sectors of the space community—industry, defense, science and manned space—tend to operate in isolation from each other. While there is a recognition of the need for improved cooperation in space, this can be achieved only if actors are made more aware of activities in other sectors that affect (or might affect) them and can craft mutually acceptable solutions with other actors. More efforts are needed to educate space stakeholders across sectors in this regard. By better understanding how the activities of all space actors are inter–related, the international community should be in a position to develop a more integrated concept of space security.     

列车“巡乘制”改革的实践与思考

实行列车“巡乘制”，既能确保列车治安平稳，又能有效缓解警力紧张的矛盾，是警务规范化管理的一次重大改革。要逐步对条件成熟的列车推行巡乘警务，加大站车视频监控等科技装备投入，不断完善以地保车机制，强化巡乘队伍自身建设，切实提升警务改革成效。     

The Crime Preventers Scheme: A Community Policing Initiative for Regime Security in Uganda

ABSTRACT

For decades, Uganda has received substantial support from development partners to implement Security Sector Reforms (SSR). Using the crime preventers’ scheme that has been implemented by Uganda Police as an element of community policing, I argue that SSR achievements in the country seem unclear and limited. Based on an ethnographic study I illustrate that the widespread crime preventers’ scheme has had contrasting effects on the Ugandan security architecture. The scheme seems to have reduced the police-citizens social distance and augmented police presence while simultaneously cased operational excesses and is routinely used in regime security strategies. To provide a better conceptualization I ask and answer a number of questions; how and why has the crime preventers’ scheme been initiated? How is the scheme related to community policing as we know it? What is the political role of the crime preventers? What motivates people to become active members of the crime preventers’ scheme? How does the scheme empirically operate?     

Security Sector Reform from a Policy Transfer Perspective: A Comparative Study of International Interventions in the Palestinian Territories,Liberia and Timor-Leste

Security sector reform (SSR), targeting security forces and their management and oversight institutions, has become a major feature of international peace- and statebuilding activities. The article draws on policy transfer research to assess substantive and procedural changes in how international actors intervene in the security governance of fragile or post-conflict states. By comparing transfer processes in Liberia, Timor-Leste and the Palestinian Territories, the article shows that despite variations across political, economic and strategic factors in each domestic context, external SSR interventions showed distinct similarities. SSR interventions expanded their substantive scope over time; less directly coercive mechanisms of persuasion and socialization increasingly replaced the direct imposition of external models of security governance; and the influence of domestic elite actors on transfer processes increased over the duration of interventions.     

情境预防视阈下首都社区安全治理——基于北京市23个社区的调查分析

情境预防理论表明首都社区安全治理绝不能仅依赖警察为主体的国家强制力,而应通过社区情境的优化来达到"无为而治"的社区治理效果。基于对北京市23个社区的调查分析,发现社区物理环境显著影响着社区安全度,楼房社区-自住平房-公寓-出租平房形成自高至低的社区安全梯度,因此情境预防应融入社区物理环境的规划-设计-建设-维护流程。另外,社区社会情境同样显著影响着社区安全度,社会治安综合治理机制与社区警务机制作为安全网络的双重支柱,应由压力型体制下单向执行转向双向互动网络,而基于互联网与物联网的社区大数据平台应构成社区神经系统与实时自动监测系统。     

Great powers,ASEAN, and security: reason for optimism?

Abstract

The positive role that external powers can play in the creation and maintenance of security in regions has long been ignored; external interference is generally perceived as detrimental to the ability of a group of states to function as a community. However, this paper argues that in the case of ASEAN, the presence of external actors allows the group to function as a community that also provides and ensures security. This paper furthers the debate regarding ASEAN's security functions. With international attention focused on the Asia-Pacific, there is a need to understand the context in which security is maintained in Southeast Asia.     

Security Provision after Regime Change: Local Militias and Political Entities in Post-Qaddafi Tripoli

This paper discusses the way the newly formed political entities and the local militias engage in statebuilding practices during Libya's transitional period of 2011–12. Focusing on the encounters between these actors in the security field, it provides insight into the capacity and strategy of national actors to build state structures and to develop the political arrangements that they deem necessary. It does so by identifying the key actors involved, as well as the interactions between them and the constantly evolving relations of control, power and authority. It shows how actors in the security field engage with each other in their efforts to expand and to institutionalize networks and influence, and the competition and alignments with other security actors that are active in the transitional phase and thereafter.     

Hate Crime: Record or Perception?

Public policing in Northern Ireland has gone through a process of reform and governance change in reaction to the peace process and the requirement to shift from a police force, largely engaged in conflict-centred policing, to a policing service dedicated to civil policing and normalisation. During the past decade, Northern Ireland has witnessed a significant decline in recorded sectarian crime. This decline in ethnic conflict has been accompanied by a growth in support for the police, especially within the Catholic community. However, information pertaining to support for public policing is determined at national level and we know little about how residents of sites of previously high levels of political and sectarian conflict feel about policing reform and delivery. In this paper we show that the perception of sectarian crime is much greater than recorded sectarian crime. Moreover, the perception of sectarian crime is a significant predictor of negative attitudes regarding police performance. The paper offers a unique quantitative insight into perceptions of sectarian crime and posits a predicament that is not discussed or debated with regard to the delivery of community policing. The evidence presented offers a benchmark upon which such a debate could occur. We argue that knowledge of sectarian hate crime should not be centred at the national level, but at the more discrete scale of neighbourhood. Perceptions, whether linked to reality, signal or prejudice, can at times destabilise the peace-building process, yet are rarely attended to or discussed. Knowing the difference between recorded and perceived crime as either sectarian exaggeration or actuality would aid localised police-community interaction. Here we provide a statistical basis to stimulate such enquiry.     

论公安院校的警务化管理

警务化管理是公安院校的主要管理方式。警务化管理对培养公安院校学生政治性、纪律性和警察意识、方便管理等方面具有积极的作用。但是,随着学生个性成长及实践中警务化管理与教学的冲突,迫切需要进一步完善。警务化管理首先应当突出学生的主体地位,强调学生参与;其次应当以服务于教学为主要理念;同时要突出公安特色;在具体手段上,应当强调刚柔并济。     

Adapting Security Sector Reform to Ground-Level Realities: The Transition to a Second-Generation Model

The security sector reform (SSR) model has entered a period of uncertainty and change. Despite being mainstreamed in international development and security policy, SSR has had a meagre record of achievement. SSR analysts, practitioners and policymakers are increasingly speaking of the need to move to a second-generation SSR model. There is a growing belief that SSR in its current form is too utopian, technocratic, state-centric, and donor-driven to succeed. While there is no universally accepted blueprint for second-generation SSR, a number of characteristics have emerged that have begun to define the contours of this alternative vision: less overtly liberal; willing to engage non-state actors, norms and structures; more modest in is objectives and time frames; attuned to the political nature of the process; and bottom-up in its orientation.     

深化规范“三项改革” 努力构建高铁时代警务实战机制

实施"三项改革"是构建高铁时代警务实战机制、提升铁路公安警务实战效能的重要途径。通过强力推进列车"巡乘制"改革、因地制宜开展线路"居家式"改革、积极探索大客站"一警多能、综合执法"改革,取得了警务效能提升、治安管控有力和民警接受认同的实际效果,为构建高铁时代警务实战机制提供了基本动力。深化规范"三项改革",要更加注重理念创新、基础夯实和系统效应,以全面带动警务实战机制改革。     

The civilian's visual security paradox: how open source intelligence practices create insecurity for civilians in warzones

ABSTRACT

Images taken by civilians and shared online have become an important source of conflict intelligence. This article explores issues around how states and non-state actors appropriate civilians’ images to produce intelligence about conflict, critically scrutinizing a practice often called open source or social media intelligence. It argues that image appropriation for open-source intelligence production creates a new kind of visual security paradox in which civilians can be endangered by their everyday visual practices because their digital images can be appropriated by outside actors as conflict intelligence. The transformation of everyday images into conflict evidence relies on what Barthes termed the photographic paradox, the paradox that while a photograph is clearly not the reality it depicts, the photograph is casually interpreted as a copy of that reality. When images are appropriated as conflict intelligence this photographic paradox translates into a security paradox. A visual security argument can be made without the intention or knowledge of the image producer, who then comes to perform the role on an intelligence agent. Yet civilians in warzones can hardly refrain from producing any images when they need to call attention to their plight, and to stay in contact with friends and relatives. The paradox, then, is that such vital visual signs of life can rapidly become sources of danger for the civilian. This civilian visual security paradox, it is argued, demands that intelligence actors respect the protected status of civilians in their online collection practices. So far, however, there is little sign of such respect.     

Introducing the special issue: bringing in the public. Intelligence on the frontier between state and civil society

ABSTRACT

This special issue is based on the observation that today’s intelligence services stand before a difficult task of, on the one hand, having to manage the uncertainties associated with new threats by inviting civil actors in to help, while also, on the other hand, having to uphold their own institutional authority and responsibility to act in the interest of the nation. In balancing this task, we show how today’s intelligence practices constantly contests the frontiers between normal politics and security politics and between civil society and the state. In this introduction we argue that these changes can be observed at three different levels. One is at the level of managerial practices of intelligence collection and communication; another is in the increased use of new forms of data, i.e. of social media information; and a third is the expansion of intelligence practices into new areas of concern, e.g. cybersecurity and the policing of (mis-) information.     

Humanitarian Crises and the International Politics of Selectivity

How has the international community responded to humanitarian crises after the end of the Cold War? While optimistic ideational perspectives on global governance stress the importance of humanitarian norms and argue that humanitarian crises have been increasingly addressed, more skeptical realist accounts point to material interests and maintain that these responses have remained highly selective. In empirical terms, however, we know very little about the actual extent of selectivity since, so far, the international community’s reaction to humanitarian crises has not been systematically examined. This article addresses this gap by empirically examining the extent and the nature of the selectivity of humanitarian crises. To do so, the most severe humanitarian crises in the post-Cold War era are identified and examined for whether and how the international community responded. This study considers different modes of crisis response (ranging from inaction to military intervention) and different actors (including states, international institutions, and nonstate actors), yielding a more precise picture of the alleged “selectivity gap” and a number of theoretical implications for contemporary global security governance.     

Judicial Reform – A Neglected Dimension of SSR in El Salvador

ABSTRACT

Security Sector Reform is an integral part of peace-building but the focus of international actors tends to be on formal state security providers. This article argues that reforms in the judicial system are key for the non-violent transformation of societal conflicts. Based on historical institutionalism a theoretical argument links justice and peace. Reforms of the judiciary need to be an integral part of SSR because otherwise reforms in the military and the police can easily be undermined or turned back. A case study on El Salvador provides empirical insights on the interrelation between reforms of these institutions.     

Introduction: making sense of Korean discourses and the East Asian regional order

This opening article presents rationales for the Special Section which analyses South Korea's debates and discourses on crucial issues related to East Asian regional politics. The article opens with a consideration of why attention is drawn to South Korea and particularly to its discourses. Expanding upon constructivist theoretical insights, this article shows how they matter in foreign policy-making and state behaviour. In addition, the article clarifies the scope of analysis of this Special Section. While recognising that many different actors and issues shape the regional order in East Asia to varying degrees, we hold that the most direct impact on changes and/or continuity in that order comes from state actors in the realm of security (or the security–economy nexus). The article ends on a cautiously optimistic note: although the perspectives and discourses analysed in this Special Section are not exhaustive, the analysis can serve as a useful reference point for discussion that seeks to advance our understandings of how South Korea is likely to behave toward its neighbours and what the future of the East Asian regional order will look like.