National Parliamentary Control of EU Policy: The Challenge of Supranational Institutional Development

The history of the EU is characterised by rapid and complex institutional development. This leaves European Affairs Committees (EACs) in national parliaments with a moving target problem in their endeavours to control the government's EU policies. This paper investigates how EACs react to this challenge. Building on the rational delegation literature, it is argued that EACs are likely to adapt control instruments in tandem with institutional changes at the supranational level. Using McCubbins and Schwartz (1984, American Journal of Political Science, 28, 165–179), it is further argued that EACs are likely to want to impose both police patrol and fire alarm control on the government. These arguments are investigated in the case of Denmark during the 50-year period since the first Danish application for EU membership in 1961, and considerable support is found for the authors' hypotheses.     

The Fate of the State Revisited

The State, which during the three and a half centuries since the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) has been the most important and the most characteristic of all modern institutions, appears to be declining or dying. In many places, existing states are either combining into larger communities or falling apart; in many places, organizations that are not states are challenging them by means fair or foul. On the international level, we seem to be moving away form a system of separate, sovereign, legally equal, states towards less distinct, more hierarchical, and in many ways more complex political structures. Inside their borders, it seems that many states will soon no longer be able to protect the political, military, economic, social and cultural life of their citizens. These developments are likely to lead to upheavals as profound as those that took humanity out of the middle ages and into the modern world. Whether the direction of change is desirable, as some hope, or undesirable, as others fear, remains to be seen.     

Outlaw Private Security Firms: Criminal and Terrorist Agendas Undermine Private Security Alternatives

The thousands of large and small private security establishments operating around the world today continue to expand in number, diversity, and capability. Government oversight is often lacking, and the impact on local, national and regional security and stability may be substantial. In the most troubled areas, the pockets of security provided by private security regimens provide may mean the difference between a failed state and one that is at least faltering. However, the advantages of “private security firm cover” quickly became evident to criminals and groups with terrorist agendas as well. This assessment addresses numerous cases from around the world of private security establishments that were either formed for—or otherwise turned to—the pursuit of criminal or terrorist purposes. The stated jihadist intent to infiltrate such companies underscores the need for law enforcement and intelligence attention to the recruiting, affiliations and activities of these security enterprises.     

The role of East Timor's security institutions in national integration – and disintegration

Abstract

This article examines the interplay between security sector developments and national unity in East Timor since the Indonesian occupation ended in 1999. Particular attention is paid to the regional distinction between Loromonu and Lorosae – people from the west and east of East Timor, respectively. In 2006, East Timor experienced a crisis that saw the disintegration of the military and police forces, and widespread violence that led to massive internal displacement. It was during this crisis that the Loromonu–Lorosae distinction first emerged as a major societal cleavage. The article argues that the independence cause and the guerrilla force Falintil had been an important focus of East Timorese national unity in 1999. In the years that followed, however, the implementation of flawed security policies led to new military and police forces that were politicized, factionalized and lacking in cohesion. Prior to the 2006 crisis, the Loromonu–Lorosae distinction was primarily an issue within the army. As the crisis escalated, however, the violence was to a large extent framed by the east–west dimension, and popular perceptions of the military as ‘eastern’ and the police as ‘western’ hardened. A year after the crisis, little if any progress had been made towards reducing the increased salience of the Loromonu–Lorosae distinction in society. The main internal security challenges – gang activity, the unresolved issue of the so-called ‘petitioners’, and the destabilizing role played by fugitive former head of military police Alfredo Reinado – all had an east–west dimension. The article also finds that new initiatives aimed at reforming East Timor's military and police forces appeared to be lacking in both depth and relevance for addressing the country's new level of internal division, and its immediate, internal security challenges.     

Australian opinion on international trade and the security link with the United States

In recent years, the Australian government has shifted the focus of its foreign economic and trade policies away from traditional practices and partners and onto Asia while simultaneously maintaining close diplomatic and defence ties with Washington. Using the results of the 1993 Australian Election Study survey, this note examines the place of public opinion in this continuing exercise. We find that although there is public support for increased trade with Asia, strong protectionist and pro‐alliance sentiments remain strong within the populace at large. These prevailing sentiments and their, albeit at this stage limited, interconnections could serve to complicate any push towards greater trade ties with its Asian neighbours.     

Emerging regional security co‐operation in Europe and the Asia Pacific

European and Asian‐Pacific policymakers need to shift from policies based on competition to those based on co‐operation. If European and Asian‐Pacific states are successful in implementing and strengthening new security institutions on the basis of co‐operative behaviour designed to realize absolute gains, then conflict in these two regions may decrease and regional hegemonic competition may not materialize. It is argued that three key factors will determine the viability of any regional security framework. These are reciprocity in security relations, great power support for the security arrangements and reassurance. In this study's comparative evaluation of Europe and the Asia Pacific, the pursuit of absolute gains through a security regime appears to be a better alternative to relative gains strategies which serve to intensify security dilemmas.

In Europe, rules and norms for state behaviour are being extended throughout the continent through the gradual extension of the West European security institutions to Central and East European states. The NACC and the PfP offer to combine the stability of the North Atlantic Alliance with the principles of co‐operative security at a pan‐European level. In the Asia Pacific, the ASEAN Regional Forum represents a positive initial step towards greater security co‐operation among the ASEAN states and their neighbours, and the United States and China need to give the ARF their full support. The difference between the ARF and NACC and the PfP is that the former does not have a history of successful military collaboration behind it, nor a developed security agenda or structure similar to that now supporting the latter two.     

Chinese—Indian relations and the process of building confidence: Implications for the Asia‐Pacific

China's traditional approach to security questions appears to be antithetical to the cooperative security approach that has been adopted by ASEAN and by embryonic multilateral organizations such as the ASEAN Regional Forum. Yet, in the course of normalizing relations with India, China has shown itself willing to explore the kind of confidence‐ and security‐building measures associated with this approach. Although it was a change in interests that prompted China to explore the worth of such measures, nevertheless cooperative security ideas have proved helpful in defusing tensions between New Delhi and Beijing. Possibly as a result of its experience with India, there are indications that China has become more receptive to the use of a cooperative security framework elsewhere in the Asia‐Pacific, most notably in dealing with the ASEAN Regional Forum. Its involvement in this process has increased the diplomatic and economic costs that would be incurred should it decide to use force to make good its irredentist claims in the South China Sea.     

Rescuing constructivism from the constructivists: a critical reading of constructivist interventions in Southeast Asian security

Abstract

Constructivist contributions to the study of Southeast Asian security raise much-needed awareness of identity concerns and introduce conceptual and methodological innovations into the study of identity. However, their shared rationalist proclivity to couple subjectivity with sovereignty revives the enduring problem of treating agency as ultimately pre-given. Contrary to their professed aim to restore to security studies an appreciation for history and practice, the contributions of many Southeast Asia constructivists are quite tellingly essentialist, particularly their concessions to state-centrism and ideational/normative determinism, both due partly to an uncritical emulation of rationalist constructivist perspectives in International Relations (IR) theory. In granting ontological priority to states, Southeast Asia constructivists cannot fully transcend reification because their denaturalizing of international anarchy or regions comes at the expense of a reified state. In reifying either the state or ideas/norms, their claim to privilege practice in their analyses of Southeast Asian security becomes suspect. But if process and practice are to be taken seriously, then Southeast Asia constructivists must avoid presuming a preordained subjectivity that invalidates their claim to study social construction.     

Environmental protection and US–Asia relations: a policy of disconnect

Despite the post-September 11 focus on regional security and the continued emphasis on regional economic cooperation, environmental degradation should not be overlooked as an important issue for US policy in and relationship with the Asia-Pacific. It is an important issue in its own right, presenting the countries of the region with ecological, economic and social (human security) challenges. There are both ethical and instrumental impulses for the United States, as a rich indus­trialised country and as a disproportionate consumer of resources and polluter of global waste, to provide environmental assistance to the Asia-Pacific. Despite global demands that the ‘new’ new world (environmental) order should be based on solidarity and collective responsibility, neither US environmental policy towards the region nor the regional consequences of its international environmental policy more generally meet this test. The US is fundamentally self-regarding rather than other-regarding in the various dimensions of its environmental relationship with the region. The consequences for both the region and for the US may be substantial. Continued environmental degradation in the region has the potential to undermine other US policy goals, in terms of its reputation, it economic objectives and even its more orthodox geopolitical security objectives.