The Indian Police: Problems and Prospects

India has a substantial terrorist problem, especially in theNortheast and in the northwestern state of Jammu and Kashmirstate. Somewhat related to this is tension between the majorityHindu community and the significant Muslim minority. Hindu-Muslimclashes in Gujarat during early 2002 led to open accusationsof government connivance and police partisanship. While theIndian Police Service has acquired a professional elan in handlingterrorism, its religious neutrality therefore continues to bequestioned. This image problem is compounded by a politicalsystem that fosters police identification with the ruling politicalparty. The ambience of corruption has also contributed to decliningstandards of personal rectitude among the higher police echelons.A lack of political will poses the significant obstacle to majorpolice reforms in the foreseeable future.     

Space and Security: The Emerging Role of Europe

Space systems have grown increasingly integral to the United States' national security in the post-Cold War era. The diplomatic and military leverage that space capabilities can provide is not going unnoticed by other countries. Since the collapse of the USSR, the United States has enjoyed a near-absolute dominance in space activities. Only the civilian European space program has mounted any sort of technical challenge to the United States, with little interest devoted to space military activities, but the period of US hegemony in the space military domain might come to an end. In recent years the European Union (EU) and its member states have taken numerous steps towards designing and assembling a Common Foreign and Security Policy and a coherent European Security and Defence Policy. Furthermore, several important steps toward linking security needs and space capabilities have been taken by the tandem European Union–European Space Agency and other relevant institutions. Space is now seen as an essential asset for European integration and for non-dependence in the current geo-strategic context, since space-based systems and derived information can bring necessary capabilities for autonomous decision making. The development of an integrated European space capability for security is at an early stage, but it is an ongoing process presenting some opportunities to enhance European independence and security.     

Global Governance: Prospects and Problems

The 50th anniversary of the UN in 1995 occasioned a widespread international discussion of 'global governance'. This term is understood to denote not just conventional bodies of international security and economic management but the overlapping and interlocking of institutions found in all issues and regions, and the increasing body of non-state actors, broadly termed 'international civil society'. This article discusses the functions and reform of global governance, and then examines these in the light of five central issues of the 1990s: the role of the great powers, peace-keeping, economic nationalism, a crisis of NGOs, and global values. It argues that advocacy of global governance must be matched by political realism on the one hand, and the recognition of the need for difficult ethical choices on the other.     

The Networked Polity: Regional Development in Western Europe

Books Reviewed:
Unmasking Administrativem Evil . Guy B. Adams and Danny L. Balfour.
The Responsible Administrator: An Approach to Ethics for the Administrative Role . Terry L. Cooper.
Public Service and Democracy: Ethical Imperatives for the 21st Century . Louis C. Gawthrop.
Parliaments and Pressure Groups in Western Europe Philip Norton, ed.
It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty Rebecca Blank.
The Quest for Responsibility: Accountability and Citizenship in Complex Organizations Mark Bovens
In Pursuit of Good Administration: Ministers, Civil Servants, andJudges Diana Wood-house.     

Blair's Commission for Africa: Problems and Prospects for UK Policy

This article examines the recommendations contained within the Commission for Africa's report Our Common Interest , and asks what they might mean for the UK's Africa policies. After discussing the choice of the Commissioners and summarising the main recommendations made in their report, the article identifies some of the central problems raised but not resolved by the Commission in the relation to issues of security, political economy and governance. The article concludes that the Commission's report raised the profile of an important set of issues but neither resolved them conceptually nor set out a persuasive plan to implement its numerous recommendations. In particular, the Commission did not convincingly explain how neo-patrimonial regimes in Africa could be reformed to ensure that they pursue genuinely national development policies instead of the current strategies that benefit their supporters and weaken their political opponents.     

Implementing Fiscal Decentralization: A Case Study of a Regional Tax Agency in Italy

As a measure to enhance the fiscal autonomy of the region, in 2006 the Regional Government of Sardinia in Italy decided to establish a tax agency for managing regional taxes on holiday houses and boat and aircraft transit. Based on interviews conducted with the tax agency director and staff, this article traces the trajectory and outcome of events included in the implementation of this part of the regional government's fiscal policy. Drawing from this case, this article theorizes the process of implementing fiscal decentralization by addressing the issue of how fiscal policy decisions affect the management of tax agencies in the start‐up stage. Social mechanisms of learning, brokerage, and actor certification provide important linkages between fiscal policy choices and organizational change. On the whole, the research argument made in this article further contributes to institutionalist and processualist research trends in current research on organization studies and public management.     

Peace-building Through Space-making: The Spatializing Effects of the African Union’s Peace and Security Policies

ABSTRACT

This article is discussing how the peace-building practices of the African Union have distinct ordering and space-making effects. Taking a socio-spatial perspective, it is argued that the peace and security projects through which the African Union, as a spatial entrepreneur, is addressing the scourge of ‘terrorism and violent extremism’ are geared towards (re-)establishing sovereignty that member states have lost in the past over their territories. While the African Union is favouring a spatial format that could be called ‘multiple networked regionalism’, the actual socio-spatial orders that are emerging around Africa’s transregional conflicts are far less clear cut.