Introduction

PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIRS was first published by the Hansard Societyin the winter of 1947, one of the coldest in Britain’shistory. At the time representative politics in general—andwhat many still referred to as ‘the mother of Parliaments’in particular—apparently enjoyed considerable popularprestige. It was not just Winston Churchill who, as he pointedout in the journal’s first issue, was conscious of ‘theunique and decisive contribution made by Parliament to the Britishwar effort’. Those busy building Labour’s post-warNew Jerusalem were, moreover, impressed by the extent to whichsuch a long-established political system could be put to     

Taking Wrongs Seriously: Acknowledgment, Reconciliation, and the Politics of Sustainable Peace, Trudy Govier

Calls for truth commissions and similar public processes topromote social reconciliation after national conflicts oftenreflect admirable aspirations but muddy thinking. This subtleand careful analysis of the processes of political reconciliationafter periods of mass violence opens for analysis the spectrumof potential meanings associated with ‘reconciliation,’ranging from social unity and harmony to the cessation of physicalviolence. Informed by philosophic analysis, social psychological studiesand historical case studies, Taking Wrongs Seriously     

Use of Force

This issue of Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, isdevoted principally to the use of force, a topic that has dominatedacademic debate and preoccupied practitioners. For academics,the question is: what distinguishes police officers and theorganisations in which they operate from others, particularlythose growing legions of private security operatives, un-swornpolice auxiliaries, and sundry officials with law enforcementpowers? The orthodox answer is that the police enjoy a ‘monopolyof legitimate force’ over their fellow citizens (a viewthat has its origins in the pioneering work of Bittner, 1970).That orthodoxy has increasingly been criticised in the faceof the obvious fact that bouncers, store detectives, securityguards of all kinds, and many others also exercise ‘legitimateforce’ in ejecting drunken customers from pubs and clubs,apprehending shoplifters, and defending     

The Time That Was Broken, the Home That Was Razed: Deconstructing Slavenka Drakulic's Storytelling About Yugoslav War Crimes

¹In this article, I analyze the conceptualization of transitionaljustice underwriting Slavenka Drakuli's book, They Would NeverHurt a Fly, on the trials at the International Criminal Tribunalfor the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. I adopt a criticaland deconstructive strategy of interpretation that reveals Drakuli'sidea of ‘justice for the Balkans’ as not only internallyincoherent and fractured but also politically problematic. Iintroduce two concepts as central to Drakuli's storytellingabout transitional justice in the former Yugoslavia: (i) theidea of a ‘broken time’ and (ii) the idea of a ‘razedhome.’ I conclude that Drakuli's narratives of justiceare aimed at repairing broken time and rebuilding the razedhome in a way that reveals the author's redemptive, rather thanpolitical, thinking about transitional justice.     

Frontline Voice: P.A.J. Waddington Interviews Chief Inspector Oliver Wright

Chief Inspector Oliver Wright is the Neighbourhood PolicingProject Manager in Britain's Thames Valley Police, policingthe counties of Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshirethat lie in the centre of the country to the north-west of London.Chief Inspector Wright is responsible for ensuring the smoothintroduction of neighbourhood policing, about which he is enthusiasticbut also realistic about the challenges that he and his colleagueswill have to face. It is ‘work in progress’; indeed,it has barely begun, for the project commenced in 2005. What is ‘neighbourhood policing’? I put it to himthat it was just the latest incarnation of the ‘communitypolicing’ idea. Whilst accepting that it embraces muchof the same ethos as ‘community policing’ he insistedthat it represented a distinctive advance. Central to     

Memory Frictions: Localizing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone

This paper concerns the frictions of engagement when transitionaljustice mechanisms are implemented in local contexts. My focusis the practice of truth-telling as part of a global paradigmof redemptive memory. I first trace the genealogy of this paradigm,examining how it came to appear ‘natural’ and ‘universal.’Second, I explore struggles over memory that ensued when SierraLeone's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) assertivelypromoted this paradigm in a region in which alternative memorytechniques reflected popular priorities in an unstable contextof ‘no peace, no war.’ These struggles were rootednot only in the contested content of memories, but also in aperceived incommensurability between contrasting memory projectsbelieved to have divergent implications for processes of reconstruction.Finally, I examine the significance of reparations both forlocal practices of post-war memory and for the local effectivenessof the TRC.     

Introduction by P. A. J. Waddington

‘Governance’ (as distinct from ‘government’)has become a term of art throughout the social sciences overthe past decade or so as scholars have struggled to understandthe complexities of contemporary social changes. This is feltin all corners of society, but has particular relevance to thepolice who have traditionally been regarded as the sole custodiansof state sovereignty, which lies in the capacity to use legitimateforce over its own citizens. This monopoly is being increasinglyeroded as the wider ‘police family’ becomes evermore populous. This reflects, in my estimation, two fundamental realities.First is the indefinite nature of the police role. As the pioneeringpolice research, Egon     

United in Diversity? Asymmetry in Indian Federalism

Many studies highlight constitutional asymmetry as a desirablefeature of federal systems in multinational countries. Thisarticle looks at India which, mainly because of the specialprovisions for Kashmir in the 1950 constitution and the statusof newer small states in the north-east, is generally describedas asymmetrically federal. I show that, while India exhibitsconsiderable de facto asymmetry, asymmetry in the constitutionalpowers granted to individual states has (i) not been importantfor India's ability to ‘hold together’ as oftenassumed and (ii) not entailed special protection of culturalor national minorities. I thus cast doubt on the normative politicalphilosophy, particularly informed by Canadian and Spanish debates,that advances the idea of asymmetrical federalism as a modelof governance in potentially divided societies.     

Transitional Justice and Peacebuilding after Mass Violence

¹Since the end of the Cold War, the international communityhas become increasingly involved in peacebuilding and transitionaljustice after mass violence. This article uses lessons frompractical experience and theories of peacebuilding and transitionaljustice to develop a model of transformative justice that supportssustainable peacebuilding. This model is holistic and transdisciplinaryand proposes a focus on civil society participation in the designand implementation of transitional justice mechanisms. It requiresus to rethink our focus on ‘transition’ as an interimprocess that links the past and the future, and to shift itto ‘transformation,’ which implies long-term, sustainableprocesses embedded in society and adoption of psychosocial,political and economic, as well as legal, perspectives on justice.It also involves identifying, understanding and including, whereappropriate, the various cultural approaches to justice thatcoexist with the dominant western worldview and practice. Asyncretic approach to reconciling restorative and retributivejustice is proposed as a contribution to developing transformativejustice and sustainable peacebuilding. The development of thistransformative justice model is informed by field research conductedin Cambodia, Rwanda, East Timor and Sierra Leone on the viewsand experiences of conflict participants in relation to transitionaljustice and peacebuilding.     

Greg Grandin and Thomas Miller Klubock, eds. 'Truth Commissions: State Terror, History, and Memory,' a special issue of Radical History Review 97

What does Radical History Review have to say about truth commissions?The journal gives them mixed reviews in this special issue,Truth Commissions: State Terror, History, and Memory. Accordingto the authors of the three full-length articles which makeup the volume, truth commissions’ treatment of past violencemay sometimes hew too closely to depoliticized narratives ofindividual victims and perpetrators – foregoing deeperaccounts of structural violence. Or, their     

A Trojan Horse? Unionism, Trust and Truth-telling in Northern Ireland

The aim of this article is to examine the relationship betweentrust, testimony and truth recovery processes as part of post-conflicttransition. The paper uses the case study of unionist attitudestoward a community-based truth-telling project in Northern Irelandto demonstrate the impact an absence of trust can have uponwhat the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has described as the‘space of controversy’ that emerges between the‘certification’ and the ‘accreditation’of testimony. The paper suggests such distrust is a legacy,not only of conflict, but also of the particular circumstancesof transition and the specific mechanisms of truth recoveryadopted. Ultimately the paper argues for a holistic, community-centredapproach towards truth-telling and raises issues relevant toother violently divided societies undergoing transition andgrappling with ways in which to deal with the legacy of politicalconflict.     

Iterative Approaches to R x C Ecological Inference Problems: Where They Can Go Wrong and One Quick Fix

This article argues that a key step in King's iterative approachto R x C ecological inference problems—the aggregationof groups into broad conglomerate categories—can introduceproblems of aggregation bias and multimodality into data, inducingmodel violations. As a result, iterative EI estimates can beconsiderably biased, even when the original data conform tothe assumptions of the model. I demonstrate this problem intuitivelyand through simulations, show the conditions under which itis likely to arise, and illustrate it with the example of Colouredvoting during the 1994 elections in South Africa. I then proposean easy fix to the problem, demonstrating the usefulness ofthe fix both through simulations and in the specific South Africancontext.     

Quantitative Leverage Through Qualitative Knowledge: Augmenting the Statistical Analysis of Complex Causes

Social scientific theories frequently posit that multiple causalmechanisms may produce the same outcome. Unfortunately, it isnot always possible to observe which mechanism was responsible.For example, IMF scholars conjecture that nations enter IMFagreements both out of economic need and for discretionary domesticpolitical reasons. Typically, though, all we observe is thefact of agreement, not its cause. Partial observability probitmodels (Poirier 1980, Journal of Econometrics 12:209–217; Braumoeller2003, Political Analysis 11:209–233) provide one methodfor the statistical analysis of such phenomena. Unfortunately,they are often plagued by identification and labeling difficulties.Sometimes, however, qualitative studies of particular casesenlighten us about causes when quantitative studies cannot.We propose exploiting this information to lend additional structureto the partial observability approach. Monte Carlo simulationreveals that by anchoring "discernible" causes for a handfulof cases about which we possess qualitative information, weobtain greater efficiency. More important, our method provesreliable at recovering unbiased parameter estimates when thepartial observability model fails. The paper concludes withan analysis of the determinants of IMF agreements.

A member shall be entitled to purchase the currencies of othermembers from the Fund ...[provided] the member represents thatit has a need to make the purchase because of its balance ofpayments or its reserve position or developments in its reserves. —InternationalMonetary Fund Articles of Agreement [IMF] negotiations sometimesenable government leaders to do what they privately wish todo, but are powerless to do domestically. —Robert Putnam(1988, p. 457)

     

Welfare Reform: Revolution or Retrenchment?

This article introduces the two main themes of this specialissue of Publius: The Journal of Federalism, workfare and federalism.At this early stage in the history of the 1996 Welfare ReformAct, these themes must be stated as questions rather than answers,as hypotheses not conclusions. What does the new welfare policyseek to accomplish? What are the effects—intended andunintended—of its limited devolution of power to the states?     

Underenforcement and Intersectionality: Gendered Aspects of Transition for Women

The transitional justice field has generally been preoccupiedby ‘dealing with the past.’ Increasingly, it isalso understood as enabling conflicted or politically unstablesocieties to integrate liberal democratic norms into processesof state-building or regime reform. Building on previous work,this article asserts that transitional justice encompasses farmore in conceptual and policy terms. Two substantive arenashave generally been overlooked: underenforcement of change processeswith transformational effects for women and the applicationof intersectionality theory to the experiences of women in post-conflictsocieties. This article addresses those lacunae.     

Time Series Intervals and Statistical Inference: The Effects of Temporal Aggregation on Event Data Analysis

While many areas of research in political science draw inferencesfrom temporally aggregated data, rarely have researchers exploredhow temporal aggregation biases parameter estimates. With somenotable exceptions (Freeman 1989, Political Analysis 1:61–98;Alt et al. 2001, Political Analysis 9:21–44; Thomas 2002,"Event Data Analysis and Threats from Temporal Aggregation")political science studies largely ignore how temporal aggregationaffects our inferences. This article expands upon others' workon this issue by assessing the effect of temporal aggregationdecisions on vector autoregressive (VAR) parameter estimates,significance levels, Granger causality tests, and impulse responsefunctions. While the study is relevant to all fields in politicalscience, the results directly apply to event data studies ofconflict and cooperation. The findings imply that politicalscientists should be wary of the impact that temporal aggregationhas on statistical inference.     

Editorial

This issue marks the first anniversary of Parliamentary Affairs'new editorial team. In our first outing we explained how wewanted to develop the journal. Founded in the aftermath of theSecond World War by Stephen King-Hall, an ex-MP and progenitorof the Hansard Society, Parliamentary Affairs was initiallydesigned to overcome widespread ignorance and low-level cynicismabout Parliament by—effectively—celebrating theBritish way of doing politics. Like many of his generation,King-Hall was confident that an educated     

How Smart Is my Dummy? Time Series Tests for the Influence of Politics

Kevin Grier Department of Economics, 335 Hester Hall, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019 e-mail: angus{at}ou.edu Of necessity, many tests for political influence on policiesor outcomes involve the use of dummy variables. However, itis often the case that the hypothesis against which the politicaldummies are tested is the null hypothesis that the interceptis otherwise constant throughout the sample. This simple nullcan cause inference problems if there are (nonpolitical) interceptshifts in the data and the political dummies are correlatedwith these unmodeled shifts. Here we present a method for morerigorously testing the significance of political dummy variablesin single equation models estimated with time series data. Ourmethod is based on recent work on detecting multiple regimeshifts by Bai and Perron. The article illustrates the potentialproblem caused by an overly simple null hypothesis, expositsthe Bai and Perron model, gives a proposed methodology for testingthe significance of political dummy variables, and illustratesthe method with two examples.

Before the curse of statisticsfell upon mankind we lived a happy, innocent life —HilaireBelloc, On Statistics

     

Transitional Subjects: The Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration of Former Combatants in Colombia

A key component of peace processes and postconflict reconstructionis the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) ofex-combatants. DDR programs imply multiple transitions: fromthe combatants who lay down their weapons, to the governmentsthat seek an end to armed conflict, to the communities thatreceive – or reject – these demobilized fighters.At each level, these transitions imply a complex and dynamicequation between the demands of peace and the clamor for justice.And yet, traditional approaches to DDR have focused almost exclusivelyon military and security objectives, which in turn has resultedin these programs being developed in relative isolation fromthe growing field of transitional justice and its concerns withhistorical clarification, justice, reparations and reconciliation.The author draws upon research in Colombia, a case of greatinterest because the government is attempting to implement mechanismsof reparations and reconciliation in a ‘pre-postconflict’context, and to implement DDR on the terrain of transitionaljustice.     

Federalism and the Controversy Over the New Media in West Germany

The possibilities of expanding the television network by meansof cable and satellite service have paved the way for the Länderto determine relevant organizational structures. The newly completedState Media Treaty seems to represent a definite breakthroughin regulatory policy. The legal regulation of the new media—cableand satellite television—faces further complications,however, insofar as nine Land media laws impose different legalrequirements on the new broadcasters. Even so, differences amongthe Länder in the area of cable TV are no longer as greatas they were in the past, and a satellite agreement reachedby the Länder provides for more uniform regulation. Also,the Federal Constitutional Court's 1986 decision emphasizingthe importance of a uniform system of broadcasting and requiringdual private and public broadcasting may have settled the fundamentalpolitical dispute among the Länder over the new media.