Public-Private Partnerships as Collaborative Projects: Testing the Theory on Cases from EU and Russia

ABSTRACT

How do public-private partnerships (PPPs) differ from traditional public procurement and what role should governments play in them? This article views PPPs as collaborative projects with imperfect information between parties. Typical public procurement contracts tackle asymmetric information problems yet limit feasibility of projects: some are not profitable enough to ensure private party participation. Partnership improves feasibility; this justifies PPPs as a form of public good provision and demonstrates how they differ from procurement. Four UK and Russian cases of PPP projects are analyzed within the above framework, focusing on types of contracts, contributions of both partners, and specific partnership elements.     

The Al Qaeda Brand: The Strategic Use of the “Terrorist” Label

Al Qaeda leaders have consistently praised the Chechen insurgents as an exemplary front of global jihad. Ayman al-Zawahiri recently applauded the steadfastness of the Chechen rebels and indicated that their resolve for jihad is worthy of emulation. Ever since the world found out about a war going on in the Muslim republic in the North Caucasus, Al Qaeda leadership has attempted to represent the Chechen struggle as one of its own battlefields. In turn, the Russian government has tried to justify its policies in the North Caucasus through demonstrating to the world that the Kremlin is fighting nothing less than Osama bin Laden’s agents in Chechnya. The North Caucasus insurgents in turn have embraced some of Al Qaeda’s narratives. While such narratives have proliferated, the factual evidence to show the direct links between the North Caucasus insurgents and Al Qaeda is still lacking. The article examines how terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda use framing for strategic ends. The evidence discussed here suggests that Al Qaeda, the North Caucasus insurgents, and the Russian government have adopted similar narratives. However, the lack of evidence to back up such narratives indicates the differences in reasons driving the convergence of the narratives.     

The effectiveness of rural versus urban nonprofit organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a country with high natural resources, but it has suffered from decades of civil wars and social turmoil, being heavily aid-dependent. In the DRC, several Nonprofit Organisations (NPOs) are major players in fighting poverty and enhancing welfare. This research aims to analyse the effectiveness of small NPOs in improving poor peoples’ lives through health, education, and economic activities. Two NPOs working in the DRC, one in a rural and the other in an urban area, are compared by researching the aid sites and surveying 201 households (aid beneficiaries). Our case observations and the survey results facilitate analysing the mission accomplishment, effectiveness, and accountability of the NPOs although we admit that the DRC conditions make exact measurements difficult. Multivariate analyses are used to study the differences in aid impacts. There are significant differences in the beneficiaries’ perception of the NPO effectiveness in improving health while no significant differences in education impact were found. This is probably because both case NPOs have succeeded in getting a large proportion of the children of their area registered in the education centres created by the NPOs. Differences were observed in the accountability and reporting style of the NPOs.     

The contested spaces of civil society in a plural world: norm contestation in the debate about restrictions on international civil society support

Civil society organizations are facing increasing political restrictions all over the world. Frequently, these restrictions apply to the foreign funding of NGOs and thus curtail the space for external civil society support, which, since the 1990s, has become a key element in international democracy and human rights promotion. This so-called ‘closing space’ phenomenon has received growing attention by civil society activists, policymakers and academics. Existing studies (and political responses), however, neglect the crucial normative dimension of the problem at hand: As we show, the political controversy over civil society support is characterized by norm contestation, and this contestation reveals competing perceptions of in/justice and touches upon core principles of contemporary world order. Taking this dimension into account is essential if we are to academically understand, and politically respond to, the ‘closing space’ challenge. It is also highly relevant with regard to current debates on how to conceptualize and construct order in a world that is plural in many regards and in which liberal norms are fundamentally contested. Empirically, the paper combines an assessment of the global debate about closing space in the UN Human Rights Council with an analysis of a specific controversy over the issue in US-Egyptian relations.     

Legal Basis and Scope of the Human Rights Clauses in EC Bilateral Agreements: Any Room for Positive Interpretation?

It is well known nowadays that the European Community includes a so-called human rights clause into the framework agreements that it concludes with third countries. It is also widely recognised that, in virtue of the relevant provisions of the Vienna Convention on the Law of the Treaties, such a clause grants the Community a right to suspend the agreement should human rights and/or democratic principles be breached. The question to be explored in the present paper is whether, in the light of its legal basis, the clause fulfils a mere 'negative' or 'sanctioning' function or, by contrast, there is room for the pursuit of positive measures of active promotion of human rights—that is the granting of technical and financial aid. It is argued here that the clauses present an ideal starting point for the pursuit of a comprehensive human rights policy at the EU level. Such a policy should encompass positive measures in the first place, systematic dialogue in the second, and suspension or negative measures of less extent only as ultima ratio in particularly grave cases which cannot be addressed through ordinary (dialogue and aid) routes.     

Learning Pain: Poetry in Emotion

This paper asks the question; is a poetic response to law and suffering legitimate? It reflects upon Robert Duncan's poem Persephone and imagines the (dis)connections between law, literature and poetry. It muses upon the “Trauma” of the poem and the “wound” considered in the context of both public and private law and considers the politics of sentimentality, dominant within the political agenda of the 21st century. The article uses the poem as a lens which reveals that the law fails to address the question of suffering as the wound of the poem is used by the poet as a pedagogical argument to teach us about loss.

     

Beyond contestation: conceptualizing negotiation in democracy promotion

ABSTRACT

This article presents an analytical framework that guides the contributions to this special issue and, in general terms, aims at enabling a systematic investigation of processes of negotiation in the international promotion of democracy. It first briefly introduces the rationale for studying democracy promotion negotiation, offers a definition, and locates the general approach within the academic literature, bringing together different strands of research, namely studies of negotiation in international relations as well as research on democratization and democracy promotion. The larger part of the article then discusses key concepts, analytical distinctions and theoretical propositions along the lines of the three research questions that are identified in the introduction to this special issue. More specifically, the article (1) offers a typology that facilitates a systematic empirical analysis of the issues that are discussed in democracy promotion negotiations; (2) takes initial steps towards a causal theory of democracy promotion negotiation by identifying and discussing a set of parameters that can be expected to shape such negotiations; and (3) introduces key distinctions and dimensions that help guide empirical research on the output and outcome of negotiations in democracy promotion.     

Modality of Obligation as a Legal Phenomenon (in the Context of Regional Legislation)

This article discusses deontic modality in the context of legal documents and its divergence from the natural, conventional, interpretation. This work demonstrates that the meaning of the performative verb is not purely linguistic. A number of non-linguistic factors cause the variation of meanings of performatives, in this case, when expressing prohibition, permission, recommendation, advice, proposal or request. These factors include: status of the addressee, type of the relationship between the author and the addressee, type of the document, possibility of control and subsequent punishment for the breach of a norm, methodology of legal drafting, traditions of the Russian document processes. There is no direct association between the type of the legal norm (permissive, obligatory, prohibitive) and the meaning of the performative. To express its will, a regional law-maker, to a varying degree, uses orders, prohibition and permissions. These are dictated by the type of the document.     

An Unusual Suicide Inside a Grave with Two Gunshot Wounds to the Head—The Psychological Approach

Abstract: In this report, the authors present a case of suicide committed by a 66-year-old man, inside a grave at the local cemetery, with two gunshot wounds to the head. A multiple-paged, handwritten suicide note was found in an army type bag inside the victim’s car, while a second one was found in his house. Medicolegal examination of the body revealed two typical contact gunshot entrance wounds and one exit wound to the head. Toxicological analysis of the femoral blood was negative for alcohol and drugs. The history, scene and autopsy findings, along with further police investigation, indicated an obvious case of suicide. The literature is reviewed and discussed. We report this case as the place of suicide is extremely uncommon and as there is no mention of a gunshot suicide inside a grave in the current literature.