‘War don don’: stability,normalcy and Sierra Leone

There are few consistently reliable indicators of stability in post-conflict countries, but police behaviour is one of them. Based on the premise that stability has less to do with the introduction of specific institutions and procedures, and more to do with how people assess their environment and go about their routine business, this article uses police reform in Sierra Leone, 1996–2005, to provide a contextual explanation of the meaning of stability and the normalcy underpinning it. Rather than focusing on programme implementation, or on the normative indicators associated with international stabilisation and reconstruction projects, it argues that stability is the cumulative result of political realities and visible low-level activities which individually reinforce or offset each other.     

Responding to Catastrophic Terrorism

Current approaches to conventional terrorism are too restrictive for the environment of catastrophe and must be supplemented by insights from disaster management and escalation theory. Although disaster management alone cannot address weaknesses in strategic planning, when complemented by the concept of escalation, the two become a useful aid to understanding events directly related to extremes of scale, complexity, or longevity. Responding to catastrophic terrorism will thus require security interests to be balanced by strategic focus, policy coherence, operational skills, and cultural values.     

Why should Austria be different from Germany? the two recent nationality reforms in contrast

The article compares and evaluates the two recent reforms of nationality law in Austria and Germany. Before the changes both countries were very similar cases in terms of their nationality and immigration policy. Both relied on strict ‘jus sanguinis’, the principle of descent which is anchored in their nationality laws. One implication of jus sanguinis is that it constantly reproduces ‘new-born’ foreigners, as the only way for foreign residents to obtain national citizenship is via naturalisation. This includes the obligation to renounce any former nationality. In its recent amendment in 2000, Germany has softened the principle of descent by introducing limited ‘jus soli’ with the obligation to opt for one nationality at the age of 23 at the latest. Austria, on the other hand, has stuck to its tradition and introduced restricted reform. The article will outline the context of the two amendments. Why has the outcome been so different although both countries have faced so many similar experiences and circumstances? I will trace the development of both amendments and highlight the backgrounds of these two so contrasting decisions: two different attempts to deal with naturalisation of long-term immigrants and new-born foreigners.     

Should Law Improve Morality?

Lawyers and philosophers have long debated whether law should enforce social morality. This paper explores whether law should improve social morality. It explains how this might be possible, and what sort of obstacles, factual and moral, there are to doing so. It concludes with an example: our law should attempt to improve our social morality of sexual conduct.