Ethics and Foreign Policy: the Antinomies of New Labour's 'Third Way' in Sub-Saharan Africa

This article explores how New Labour has attempted to implement its ideas about a 'third way' foreign policy in sub-Saharan Africa. Through an examination of British foreign policy practices, we explore whether New Labour has succeeded in finding a 'third way' between traditional views of socialism and capitalism in Africa. In particular, the article focuses on New Labour's attempts to build peace, prosperity and democracy on the African continent. We conclude that although New Labour's claims to add an 'ethical dimension' to foreign policy have succeeded in giving Britain a higher profile in the international arena, the implementation of such a policy is intrinsically difficult. These difficulties in turn arise from the antinomies embodied in New Labour's policy, or more specifically from the tension between the liberal internationalism of the third way and traditional concerns for the national interest, as well as the contradictions inherent in a commitment to both political and economic liberalism.     

Legislatures and their past: The History of Parliament project and the significance of history

Using interviews with Conservative MPs, three aspects of the Poll Tax not covered by the extant literature are examined. Conservative backbenchers are shown to be more supportive of the tax than in previous accounts. The nature and effect of both the legal and non‐legal protests against the Poll Tax are discussed. The effect of petitioning is found to be minor, but the amount and (especially) the nature of post which MPs received had more impact. Other than the quantity, five characteristics are identified which contributed to making this post more significant than other ‘issue’ post received by MPs. The extra‐parliamentary action is also shown to have had a surprisingly strong effect on Conservative MPs.     

Latency – Time for lawyers to get up to speed?

While latency issues have always existed in IT systems, it is only in recent years that latency has become a significant focal point for both IT suppliers and customers. This paper will provide an overview as to how latency arises in IT systems, why latency is becoming important across a variety of business sectors and then explores some of the prominent legal issues inherent in contracting for low-latency solutions.     

Privacy and the regulation of 2012

This paper explores the European Commission’s proposal for a new Regulation to update and reform data protection law in Europe. As regards the Regulation itself, without presenting an exhaustive analysis of all the provisions, this paper aims to highlight some significant changes proposed to the data protection regime by comparison between Directive 95/46 and the proposed Regulation. It takes particularly into account legislative innovation concerning data protection principles, data subjects’ rights, data controllers and data processors obligations, and the regulation of technologies. Before analyzing these innovations, it introduces some considerations about the Commission’s choice to use a Regulation instead of a Directive to harmonize national data protection regime.     

The state of the art in privacy impact assessment

There is growing interest in Europe in privacy impact assessment (PIA). The UK introduced the first PIA methodology in Europe in 2007, and Ireland followed in 2010. PIAs provide a way to detect potential privacy problems, take precautions and build tailored safeguards before, not after, the organisation makes heavy investments in the development of a new technology, service or product. This paper presents some findings from the Privacy Impact Assessment Framework (PIAF) project and, in particular, the project's first deliverable, which analyses the similarities and differences between PIA methodologies in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, with a view to picking out the best elements which could be used in constructing an optimised PIA methodology for Europe. The project, which began in January 2011, is being undertaken for the European Commission's Directorate General Justice. The first deliverable was completed in September. The paper provides some background on privacy impact assessment, identifies some of its benefits and discusses elements that can be used in construction of a state-of-the-art PIA methodology.