European Union Training Missions: security sector reform or counter-insurgency by proxy?

With European Union Training Missions (EUTM) Mali and EUTM Somalia, the EU seeks to stabilize countries facing state weakness caused by intrastate conflict. While the EU formally promotes security sector reform (SSR) through its foreign policy, the EUTM missions in Mali and Somalia in one sense can be described as “counter-insurgency by proxy” as military trainees combat local insurgencies shortly upon graduation. This raises the question whether the EUTM missions are consistent with SSR aims, such as creating a security sector that is legitimate, sustainable, and under civilian control, or inadvertently risk contributing to negative side effects in the medium term. Based on extensive interviews in Belgium, Kenya, Mali, Sweden, and Uganda with personnel who either served in or planned these missions, this study analyses factors which hinder the EUTM concept from being fully consistent with SSR and identifies possible policies to ameliorate the risk of unintended side effects.     

Knowledge and the economy: some critical comments

Abstract

In the 1990s central banking in Europe and the United States witnessed a paradigm change. A central tenet of the new paradigm was that a central bank which acts in a transparent and predictable manner reduces uncertainty for economic actors and will be better able to control inflationary expectations. Thus, central bankers set out to enhance their institution's transparency. In this paper, I argue that transparency is not limited to the release of economic data or information about decision-making procedures. It entails producing a new type of market order and results in a new agencement. This paper focuses on the European Central Bank (ECB) and on one actor it relies on: the media. Based on ethnographic data, I analyse the role of the media in the production of a transparent market order. I find that prevailing new rules, new frames and reward systems preclude journalists from playing the role the ECB would like them to play: the instrumental role of a neutral transmitter of information. The struggle between the two actors is a struggle with words, in which both journalists and central bankers want to manipulate markets with their communicative utterances, albeit in different and frequently opposing ways.     

Free Movement of Third Country Nationals in the European Union? Main Features,Deficiencies and Challenges of the new Mobility Rights in the Area of Freedom,Security and Justice

The adoption of European Community (EC) Directives in the field of legal migration has been accompanied by the introduction of intra-community mobility rights. This new kind of right is characterised by specific features with regard to free movement rights enjoyed by European Union (EU) citizens. Besides, existing mobility rights for third country nationals (TCNs) raise some important problems with regard to their legal configuration and to their relationship with other fields of Community law. After having addressed these issues, it will be argued that the current regulation of mobility rights for TCNs does not fulfil the requirements of systematic coherence, and does no meet the need to grant a level of free movement that encompasses the evolution of harmonisation in the field of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice.     

Texas Criminal Defense Attorneys’ Perceptions of Crime Victim Involvement in Criminal Prosecutions

The purpose of this study was to test the utility of the Victim Satisfaction Model of the criminal justice system by quantitatively assessing criminal defense attorneys’ perceptions of victims’ involvement in the charging and plea bargaining stages of the criminal process. A cross-section research design was used in this study. Self-administered questionnaires were mailed to defense attorneys who regularly practice criminal law in Texas. The results of this study support the utility of the Victim Satisfaction Model of the criminal justice system and further our understanding of victim involvement in the decision making and have important implications for the American criminal justice system.