Securing the global city?: an analysis of the ‘Medellín Model’ through participatory research

This article explores the potential contribution to a better understanding and practice of urban security from participatory research methodologies with communities most affected by insecurity and violence. It focusses on the case of Medellín, Colombia, and analyses the key features and impacts of what is known as the ‘Medellín Model’, an approach to urban security widely regarded as innovative and successful. It locates this approach in a history of efforts to reframe security in Latin America, where urban violence has escalated greatly. The shift from ‘security as repression’ to ‘security as management’ has ushered in new models for governing ‘ungoverned’ neighbourhoods. The scrutiny of the effectiveness of these models is limited, however, by the accumulated mistrust and fear in such spaces. This article analyses a methodology for researching security practice on the ground. The paper assesses what difference it makes when academic, civic and social organisations come together to co-produce knowledge with community researchers living in the midst of mutating forms of violence. The methodology, it is argued, enables those most impacted by chronic violence to highlight how insecurity is differentially experienced and to show they can exercise agency in public security policies, making these more relevant and sustainable.     

Policy design as craft: teasing out policy design expertise using a semi-experimental approach

Public policy research typically neglects the role of the individual policy actor with most accounts of the policy process instead privileging the role of governmental systems, institutions, processes, organizations; organised interests or networks of multiple actors. The policy design literature suffers from similar limitations, with very few authors paying attention to the crucial work of the individual policy designer or considering how the latter’s skills, expertise and creativity are employed in the design task. This represents a significant weakness in our understanding of how policy is formulated. This paper outlines and previews what we believe is a potentially fruitful semi-experimental methodological tool for exploring how individual policy actors draw on knowledge, expertise, intuition and creativity in framing and responding to complex policy issues. Real-time scenario-based problem-solving exercises are used to explore how policy problems and solutions are framed and articulated by novice (first-term politicians and early career bureaucrats) and experienced (former cabinet ministers and senior civil servants) policy actors and to examine the strategies and approaches they employ in response to specific problem cues. Initial findings are discussed, and we conclude by advancing potential refinements of the instrument and directions for future research.     

Working with Complexity: Community Engagement and the Murdi Paaki COAG Trial 2002–2007

Achieving improvements in indigenous health and education and reducing the incidence of crime and domestic violence in indigenous communities has proved heartbreakingly difficult. The Murdi Paaki COAG trial in western NSW aimed to break this pattern of failure by tailoring flexible Commonwealth and State government support to indigenous communities, working within a framework of shared responsibility. In this article we assess the trial as a policy strategy by comparing outcomes and patterns of outcomes across the sixteen communities. We found that the strategy worked best where ‘good enough’ governance was aligned with flexibility, rather than with control. This way of working is difficult for governments as it can be a slow process, and requires stability in the policy and engagement framework to deliver results. More broadly, our findings confirm the usefulness of complexity theory to illuminate and to explain the evolution of process in administrative contexts involving networked governance.