Countering piracy through private security in the Horn of Africa: prospects and pitfalls

Employing secondary research and semi-structured interviews, this article examines the use of private maritime security companies (PMSC) in providing maritime security services in the Horn of Africa. It consists of four parts. The first part explains the origins and development of the use of PMSC in the Horn of Africa. The second section discusses the regulation of the private security industry, paying particular attention to the maritime context. Part three examines the challenges associated with the use of maritime PMSC in the Horn of Africa, including negative human rights implications, compromising the innocent passage of commercial ships, and creating confusion in the hierarchical control of ships. Finally, the paper analyses the findings and concludes that PMSC, despite their apparent short-term effectiveness, cannot be regarded as a long-term solution to the piracy phenomenon in the Horn of Africa.     

Cohabitation in Europe: a revenge of history?

Unmarried cohabitation is often seen as a radically ‘new’ phenomenon, originating in the 1960s, but in fact it has long historical antecedents. The question is, however, whether traditional and modern cohabitation are comparable and whether we can speak of persistence. This article offers a literature review on cohabitation in Europe, with the focus on persistence over time, integrating the results of a 2013 conference on this topic. What sources are available to confirm or reject such persistence? How should we understand persistence? In terms of the motivations of unmarried cohabitants? Or in terms of the acceptance of the community at large? And if no real persistence is found, does this mean that European cohabitation since the 1970s truly represents ‘new’ behaviour? We show that, on the regional level, the legacy of the past is still visible in factors affecting the timing and frequency of marriage of cohabiting couples. These factors are a mixture of regional socio-economic constraints, the relative cultural importance attached to marriage, the religious history, and the level of secularization.     

Hydropolitics: challenging the water-war thesis

Mostafa Dolatyar is Assistant Director at the Department of Border Affairs, Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a senior consultant in the field of international relations. For the past few years he has focused on the environment of the Middle East.     

Conflict and peace building in West Africa: the role of civil society and the African Union

The paper examines the problem of conflicts and the task of peace building in West Africa explicating the role of civil society and the African Union in that process. It argues that there is an inverse relationship between the causes of conflicts and the challenge of peace building in the sub‐region. The crisis of governance, which manifests in the problems of authoritarian rule, statism, identity and citizenship, minority agitation, economic and social injustice are key elements in the aetiology of conflicts, which have to be gradually deconstructed for meaningful peace building to take place in the sub‐region.     

Impact of Currency Boards on Fiscal Policy in Central and Eastern European Countries

The paper focuses on the impact of currency boards on fiscal policy in transition economies. Starting with an overview of theoretical and empirical studies in the related area, it tests for the interaction between monetary policy regimes and fiscal policy in Central and Eastern European countries who aim for the membership in the European Union. The theoretical background of this study lies in the model of Tornell and Velasco (1998). They demonstrate that fiscal transfers do not ultimately depend on the chosen exchange rate and monetary policy, but only on the world's real rate of interest and the rate of time preference of the fiscal authority. A sample of 10 accession candidates constitutes a group of countries which go through similar macroeconomic stabilisation processes but have chosen different nominal anchors. The paper investigates whether there are any systematic differences between those countries with a currency board arrangement and those without. The empirical evidence suggests that currency boards enhance fiscal discipline in Central and Eastern European countries.