Navigating the dilemmas of politically smart,locally led development: the Pacific-based Green Growth Leaders’ Coalition

Abstract

Iterative approaches to development under banners such as ‘thinking and working politically’ and ‘doing development differently’ build upon decades-old commitments to fostering locally led and -owned development. These approaches are increasingly popular with academics and development practitioners. In this paper we argue that outsiders seeking to deliver locally led, politically smart programmes need to either accept that competing priorities, results and values will work to limit the extent of true local ownership, or be sufficiently committed to true local leadership to accept that this may well cut against organisational imperatives. Using the example of the Pacific-based Green Growth Leaders’ Coalition, we discuss how politically tricky partnerships challenge tenets of local leadership and ownership.     

The Commonwealth is Getting its Second Wind

This article looks forward to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London, April 2018, in light of reflection on the nature of the Commonwealth (‘club, church or beehive?’) and its legacy. Special attention is paid to the significant anniversaries of 2015—Magna Carta, United Nations, end of the Second World War, London Declaration and 50 years of the Commonwealth Secretariat. The author also considers the agendas for CHOGM and the implications for the Commonwealth of Britain’s exit from the European Union (Brexit).     

Britain Returns to the Indian Ocean?

This article considers how far the UK is returning to an ‘East of Suez’ role in the Indian Ocean. A threefold structure is taken based on past, current and future aspects of this role. The first section (‘past’) considers the Indian Ocean as a British Lake and the announced withdrawal from East of Suez that was announced in the early 1970s. The second section (‘present’) looks at the various bases, facilities and partnerships that the UK has around and across the Indian Ocean with Bahrain, Oman, Gulf of Aden, Somaliland, Diego Garcia (and the United States), India, Malaysia and Singapore (including the Five Power Defence Agreements), Australia and China. The third section (‘future’) considers likely post-BREXIT decisions facing the UK in the Indian Ocean with regard to its projected naval assets and political choices across the region. It finds there is some substance behind the rhetoric on a British return to the area.     

Metropolitan government in Vancouver: the strategy of gentle imposition††

Abstract. The creation of a metropolitan government in the Greater Vancouver urban region was a deliberate policy adopted by Municipal Affairs Department strategists in the mid-1960s even though for several years the Minister publicly argued that the regional district was not a metropolitan government. The policy was essentially to create a local federation variety of metropolitan government. The strategy was to gently impose an administrative structure without any functions at 1st so as to not unduly compel the local leaders or predetermine those matters on which inter-municipal cooperation was to be based. In time, the local leaders themselves became aware of the potential of this innocuous regional district. The province remained ready to impose an integration of those functions more efficiently performed at the regional level in the event of any recalcitrance developing within established bureaucracies or local political units which was inimical to the provincial policy. The uniqueness of the experiment in BC had two main features: the low-key initiative of the province and the basic flexibility of the new form of government which permitted adaptation to the forces for metropolitan functional integration coming from both the provincial level and the local level. The success in launching regional overnment in British Columbia was to a large extent a result of the heeding, by the strategists, of the experience in the United States, in other places in Canada, and an earlier attempt in the late 1950s in Vancouver. Sommaire. La création d'un gouvernement métropoIitain dans la région urbaine du Grand Vancouver a été une politique préméditée qui a été adoptée par les stratèges du Ministère des Affaires municipales am environs de 1965, bien que le Ministère ait affirmé publiquement pendant longtemps que le “district régional” n'était pas un gouvernement métropolitain. La politique a été essentiellement de créer un genre de gouvernement métropolitain ressemblant à une fédération de municipalités. La stratégie à consisté d'abord dans l'imposition d'une structure administrative sans aucune function faint de be pas forcer la main aux chefs Iocaux ou de ne pas déterminer à l'avance les questions qui serviraient de base à la collaboration intermunicipale. Plus tard, les chefs locaux se sont rendus compte du potentiel de ce “district régional” inoffensif. Le gouvernement provincial de son côtéétait prêt à imposer une intégration régionale des fonctions qui s'exécutent mieux à ce niveau advenant le cas oú une résistance se développerait au sein des bureaucraties ou des cons& municipaux, des oppositions qui iraient à l'encontre de la politique provinciale. Les deux traits principaux de cette expérience en Colombie-Britannique furent: l'initiative discrète de la province et f flexibilité de base de ce nouveau genre de gouvernement qui ont permis une adaptation aw forces locales et provinciales pour une intégration métropolitaine des fonctions municipales. Le lancement du gouvemement régional en Colombie-Britannique fut un grand succès dûá l'attention que les stratèges ont porté aux expéiences américaines et canadiennes ainsi qu'à la tentative antérieure faite à Vancouver entre 1957 et 1960.     

Dental hygiene students' matching accuracy when comparing antemortem dental radiographs and oral photographs to simulated postmortem WinID3® odontograms

Matching dental antemortem (AM) and postmortem (PM) data for human identification is especially challenging when the workforce is limited. Dental hygienists have served mass fatality incidents (MFIs) due to dental-related expertise. However, forensics within dental hygiene education and research on transferable skills is limited. This qualitative balance design study assessed senior dental hygiene students' match accuracy of simulated cases varying in dental identifiers based on AM full mouth series (FMS) radiographs and oral photographs to PM WinID3^® odontograms to demonstrate possible disaster victim identification (DVI) transferable skills gained during formal education. A convenience sample of senior dental hygiene students (n = 31) was presented information on WinID3^® interpretation, then presented with 5 mismatched cases and asked to visually interpret each to make 10 total matches; five based on AM FMS with simulated PM WinID3^® odontograms and five based on AM photographs with PM WinID3^® odontograms. Match accuracy scores ranged from 41.9% to 58.1% for cases with 1–10 identifiers, and 77.4% to 93.5% for cases with 11–40 identifiers. Accuracy when matching AM radiographs to PM odontograms versus AM photographs to PM odontograms was compared and revealed no statistical differences in match accuracy depending on image type (p = 0.388 to 1.000). Results of this pilot study suggests transferable match accuracy skills resulted from the participants' dental hygiene formal education. These baseline skills with additional specialized training support the rationale for dental hygienists serving on DVI teams. More research is needed in education and practice when preparing dental hygienists for forensic-based service.     

Organic impurity profiling of fentanyl samples associated with recent clandestine laboratory methods

Nearly a decade ago, fentanyl reappeared in the United States illicit drug market. In the years since, overdose deaths have continued to rise as well as the amount of fentanyl seized by law enforcement agencies. Research surrounding fentanyl production has been beneficial to regulatory actions and understanding illicit fentanyl production. In 2017, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) began collecting seized fentanyl samples from throughout the United States to track purity, adulteration trends, and synthetic impurity profiles for intelligence purposes. The appearance of a specific organic impurity, phenethyl-4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (phenethyl-4-ANPP) indicates a shift in fentanyl production from the traditional Siegfried and Janssen routes to the Gupta-patent route. Through a collaboration between the DEA and the US Army's Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center (DEVCOM CBC), the synthesis of fentanyl was investigated via six synthetic routes, and the impurity profiles were compared to those of seized samples. The synthetic impurity phenethyl-4-ANPP was reliably observed in the Gupta-patent route published in 2013, and its structure was confirmed through isolation and structure elucidation. Organic impurity profiling results for illicit fentanyl samples seized in late 2021 have indicated yet another change in processing with the appearance of the impurity ethyl-4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (ethyl-4-ANPP). Through altering reagents traditionally used in the Gupta-patent route, the formation of this impurity was determined to occur through a modification of the route as originally described in the Gupta patent.     

Does police patrol in large areas prevent crime? Revisiting the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment

Research Summary

The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment (KCPPE) was seen by its developers to have produced “consistent evidence of the lack of effects of any consequence on crime,” a conclusion that was to have a strong impact on assumptions about police patrol for almost half a century. We identified the original official crime data from the KCPPE, and reanalyzed outcomes focusing on a comparison of the “proactive” versus “control” beats (“reactive beats” were criticized because of violations of treatment integrity); examining broad categories of crime (to increase statistical power); and using count regression models. Our findings are not unequivocal, but point to modest impacts of police patrol on crime in police beats.

Policy Implications

Our findings suggest that lessons drawn for half a century from the KCPPE need to be revisited. The KCPPE does not show that police patrol in large areas has no influence on crime, and this finding is consistent with several more recent studies. At the same time, we note that the effects of patrol in the KCPPE using our analysis strategy, and those found in other studies of preventive patrol in larger areas, are about half that found in hot spots policing studies. This suggests that police agencies ideally should invest in focused hot spots policing initiatives. However, absent an ability to manage such initiatives, or the crime analysis capabilities to identify crime hot spots routinely, simpler preventive patrol schemes to utilize uncommitted patrol time can be seen as potentially effective in preventing crime.