The most ambitious plan in 26 years of telecoms market reform? No way!

The European Commission's claim that their proposed new telecoms regulation² constitutes “the most ambitious plan in 26 years of telecoms market reform” is preposterous. That honour must belong to the set of new European directives in 2002 which transformed the structure of telecoms regulation and facilitated competition throughout Europe. Instead the plans make great play of a number of actually pretty minor changes and, the Body for European Regulators for Electronic Communications (“BEREC”) has been particularly critical that the proposals will create unnecessary complexity and uncertainty and limit innovation and competition.     

The Changing Security Agenda in Southeast Asia: Globalization,New Terror,and the Delusions of Regionalism

One of the distinguishing features of international terrorism the past fifteen years has been the resurgence and proliferation of terrorist groups motivated by a religious imperative. Such groups are far more lethal than their secular counterparts, regarding violence as a divine duty or sacramental act conveyed by sacred text and imparted by clerical authority. Moreover, religious terrorism is not restricted to Islamic terrorist groups exclusively in the Middle East. The same characteristics—the legitimization of violence based on religious precepts, the sense of profound alienation and isolation, and the attendant preoccupation with the elimination of a broadly defined category of “enemies”—are also apparent among American Christian white supremacists, among some radical Jewish messianic terrorist movements in Israel, and among radical Sikh movements in India. Finally, as many of these groups embrace strong millennialist or apocalyptic beliefs, we may be on the cusp of a new and potentially more dangerous era of terrorism as the year 2000—the literal millennium—approaches.     

Old wine in new bottles: Re‐publishing African writers

Things Fall Apart. Chinua Achebe, 1986.150pp. £3.50pb

Arrow of God. Chinua Achebe, 1986. 230pp. £3.50pb

A Grain of Wheat. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 1986. 247pp. £3.95pb

Petals of Blood. Ngugi wa Thiong'o, 1986. 250pp. £3.95pb

God's Bits of Wood. Sembene Ousmane, 1986. 245pp. £3.50pb

Estrangement. Elechi Amadi, 1986. 244pp. £3.95pb

London: Heinemann Educational Books (African Writers Series)

The Beggar's Strike. Aminata Sow Fall, London: Longman (African Classics). 1987.112pp. £2.95pb

The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta. Mario Vargas Llosa (Translated by Alfred MacAdam) New York: Vintage books. 1986. 309pp. $6.95pb

The Penguin Book of Modern Urdu Poetry. Edited by Mahmood Jamal, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1986. 165pp. £3.95pb     

Disruption is Not Permitted: The Policing and Social Control of Occupy Oakland

Negotiated management—various forms of communication, collaboration and cooperation between police and protest organizers, often taking the form of protest permits—has been mainly theorized as a means to mitigate police violence while respecting protesters’ 1st Amendment rights. A few theorists have problematized this view, suggesting that negotiated management is a form of social control that puts various restrictions on dissent. Drawing from my research on Occupy Oakland, I build upon these critiques to illustrate how negotiated management was used as a tool of repression in two key ways, and how newer forms of repression (strategic incapacitation) are still enmeshed in its logic. First, by criminalizing legal activity among protesters, through the use of a permit, who were then subjected to police repression. Second, I show how negotiated management as a normative structure of protest was used as a form of repression, even when communication and cooperation with police were clearly rejected by the movement. I illustrate how the refusal of negotiated management was used to discredit the movement and subject it to physical repression. Rather than seeing negotiated management as an alternative to police repression and strategic incapacitation, I argue that they are two sides of the same policing project, the primary aim of which is to prevent disruptive protest.     

“Broken Windows,” Urban Policing, and the Social Contexts of Race and Neighborhood (Dis-)Empowerment

Robert Sampson’s “Great American City” is a methodologically rich and theoretically broad contribution to the literature on durable inequality in US cities. While empirically clear on the causes and consequences of lasting social exclusion, the text’s insights remain somewhat trapped behind the “collective efficacy” language of the “broken windows” theories it attempts to shatter. In looking at community empowerment, or its lack, in the inner-city, the racialized role of urban police must be central to any analysis of the cycle of crime and poverty, and how to break it.     

Canguilhem and the problem of pathology

This article examines continuities and change in Cangilhem's thought with particular reference to the status of biology and sociology and to the theme of intellectual and social progress. It is suggested that one of the central issues of Cangilhem's writings is an attempt to work through the problems raised by the programme of Comtean positivism. The fact that Canguilhem's reflections were not completely unambigous is dusscussed through an examination of those parts his work which deal directly or indirectly with pathology.     

Reducing and preventing organised crime: An evidence-based critique

Theory and practice in crime prevention and crime reduction have developed and changed significantly, but attention has been focused largely upon conventional forms of crime (especially street crime) and upon situational approaches to their reduction. Drawing on research with a variety of relevant organisations across Europe, this article explores the possibilities of developing more effective crime reduction strategies in respect of organized crime, an area in which (despite important exceptions, particularly in relation to financial regulation), law enforcement rather than prevention has continued to dominate the thinking and the practical responses of the police and other relevant agencies. It illustrates the difficulties of evaluating prevention in the many areas in which data quality on crime levels and their organisation are poor, but also gives examples (mainly financial crime) where private sector data quality are good enough to demonstrate effectiveness. It differentiates impact on crime from impact on the organisation of crime, and between market crimes involving voluntary vice and predatory crimes involving direct harm to victims, concluding that current performance indicators for enforcement agencies may need substantial revision if the focus shifts to organised crime reduction.