On regional security governance once again: how analysis of the Southern Caucasus can advance the concept

Already introduced to the academic and political debate some years ago, the concept of “security governance” still needs to be clarified. In particular, four main shortcomings need to be overcome to make the concept more useful for an assessment of current security dynamics: in the first place, attention has been devoted more to “governance” than to “security”, while failing to consider the role of the understandings and perceptions of the actors involved in the governance system. Second, the literature on the actors (governmental or not) involved is still fragmented. Third, the literature on security governance has too often been detached from reflections on regionalism, while it would be useful to further explore the relationship between cognitive definitions of regional and security dynamics. Fourth, the literature has predominantly focused on Europe and the transatlantic area, overlooking processes of “region-building” in security terms in other “unexpected” geographical spaces. After proposing avenues to overcome the current gaps in the literature, the Southern Caucasus is chosen as a case study to show the different instances of security governance emerging, thanks to definitions of the region in security terms that have involved regional and external actors, of a state and non-state nature.     

Populism and technocracy: opposites or complements?

Although populism and technocracy increasingly appear as the two organising poles of politics in contemporary Western democracies, the exact nature of their relationship has not been the focus of systematic attention. This article argues that whilst these two terms – and the political realities they refer to – are usually assumed to be irreducibly opposed to one another, there is also an important element of complementarity between them. This complementarity consists in the fact that both populism and technocracy are predicated upon an implicit critique of a specific political form, referred to in this article as ‘party democracy’. This is defined as a political regime based on two key features: the mediation of political conflicts through the institution of political parties and a procedural conception of political legitimacy according to which political outcomes are legitimate to the extent that they are the product of a set of democratic procedures revolving around the principles of parliamentary deliberation and electoral competition. This argument is made through a close analysis of works by Ernesto Laclau and Pierre Rosanvallon, chosen as exemplary manifestations of the contemporary cases for populism and technocracy, respectively.     

End-of-Life Decisions in Albania: The Call for an Ethical Revision

Liverpool Law Review - While in Western European countries, the end-of-life decisions have become a matter of public policy, this paper provides a detailed analysis of end-of-life decisions in...     

Why and How Civil Defense Militias Emerge: The Case of the Arrow Boys in South Sudan

This article uses a collective-action framework to study the mobilization of the Arrow Boys (AB), a community defense militia in South Sudan. Drawing on general collective-action explanations, this article argues that the mobilization of the AB was facilitated by two factors: (1) a strong overlap of the fighter's private and the community's public benefit and (2) close social relationships and expectations within the community. The article supports these theoretical claims by, first, examining the scope conditions under which the AB formed and, second, drawing on individual interviews with AB members from Western Equatoria in South Sudan.     

Personality Profiles of Special Force Police Officers

The present study was aimed at investigating whether different personality profiles could be found among Italian police Special Force (SF) officers. Our hypothesis was that different personality profiles would be found, and that they would differ with respect to psychological and organizational functioning. This conjecture was tested on anonymously collected Big Five scores of all members of a 'Reparto Mobile' unit (n?=?289) by means of a Two-Step cluster analysis. Two distinct personality profiles were found: two-thirds of participants showed a personality profile that was quite similar to the general population, with the exception of a higher self-reported emotional stability and self-deceptive enhancement, while the remaining third showed higher levels of any personality domain than both the other cluster and the general population. These officers also endorsed lower scores in measures of depression, anxiety, professional exhaustion, loss of empathy, and higher scores in a measure of organizational resilience, suggesting that they may represent the most suitable personnel for the delicate tasks their unit usually has to accomplish. In addition, self-deceptive enhancement emerged as a likely personality trait of police SF officers.     

Assessing network patterns in illegal firearm markets

This study presents the results from a qualitative survey of 20 incarcerated and nonincarcerated illicit firearm market consumers in Quebec. Its general aim is to identify key acquisition patterns for illegal firearms. The interview sessions confirmed several general patterns emerging from past research. Illegal firearm acquisitions generally took place through informal channels. Opportunistic transactions were prevalent across all respondents’ experiences. The presence of key point sources were discussed across the interviews, but to a much lesser extent than the high volume of friends, family members, and close contacts who were more likely to supply firearms. Point sources, and particularly those operating off Native reserves near Montreal, were also more difficult to access for inexperienced acquirers. That such reputed suppliers were not as prevalent across respondents’ experiences was not simply due to the difficulties to access them, but largely because respondents were already well exposed to a variety of channels for acquiring firearms. An analysis of respondents’ personal networks revealed that only a few respondents had closed networks that were limited in suppliers and that most were able to acquire illegal firearms through open or brokered networks that put them into contact with a multitude of suppliers (in open networks) or a reliable set of intermediaries (in brokered networks). This was the case for both free and incarcerated respondents in the sample. That open and brokered networks were more prominent suggests that even if key point sources are removed from the market by law-enforcement efforts, consumers will be able to adjust rather quickly by turning to any of the channels that are accessible to them.     

The Effects of Oil Production and Ethnic Representation on Violent Conflict in Nigeria: A Mixed-Methods Approach

A large qualitative literature on violent conflict in Nigeria has identified the importance of oil production and ethnicity as salient factors in understanding violence, especially in the oil-rich Niger Delta. This resonates with the broader literature on natural resources, ethnic exclusion, and conflict. This article advances existing research by providing the first highly disaggregated statistical analysis of oil, ethnicity, and violence for Nigerian Local Government Areas (LGAs). We test whether oil production in a weak state environment, and local groups’ access to governmental power, affect the level of violence in Nigeria. We employ unique disaggregated data on violent conflict events, proprietary data on oil production, and newly collected information on local ethnic groups’ access to the federal government for 774 LGAs. We find strong evidence that LGAs with oil infrastructure experience significantly more violence than others, while access to the federal government significantly reduces violence. We complement these findings with a qualitative investigation of violent conflicts in Nigeria.