Transformative state publics

Against the conventional assumption that publics, and particularly radical publics, are outside the state, this article explores their mutual combination and entanglement in order to consider how states might contribute to progressive politics. At the heart of this account is a concept of the state that incorporates the dissident and fleeting, and a conception of transformative publics based on four modalities: prefigurative, improper, liberatory, and unconditional. Transformative publics can be found within state formations; they also combine with them to produce new political governance relations. To develop this argument, the article focuses on two kinds of publics: those involving compelled state actors, such as school children and prisoners; and those, such as protest camps, taking shape through grass-roots political action.     

From papyrus to cyber: how technology has directed law enforcement policy and practice

Abstract

Cyber technology, both explicitly and implicitly, impacts every facet of local, state, national and international criminal justice operations. Unfortunately, technological changes, including cyber technologies, are rarely well thought out and may have unintended negative consequences. Additionally technology, and particularly cyber technology, evolves at a much faster pace than our understanding of the ethics, laws and policies involved. Consequently, citizens, criminals and justice professionals often rely on technology without the benefit of legal protections or explicit agency policy. This paper will examine how technology, both historically (non cyber) and contemporarily (cyber), has positively and negatively affected one aspect of the Criminal Justice enterprise – law enforcement.     

From public action to public administration: where does it lead?

Minnowbrook I and Minnowbrook II differ in one important way. Minnowbrook I involved mostly scholars who came to the field primarily through formal academic training. Several of those who participated in Minnowbrook II are products of comrnunity-based applied revisions of so-called new public administration in the 1960s. Radin served as a union employee and then a staff member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Cooper worked as a minister at several inner-city churches. Both Radin and Cooper took their doctorates later in their careers, after extensive street level experience. From this perspective they focus on the unique political setting of public administration, on the field's publicness, on the salience of theories of change, on a process perspective, and on “soft” research methodologies.

Through much of its history, the field of public administration in the United States has been punctuated by figures who moved from the arena of action to opportunities for reflection, either through writing or teaching or both. A review of the literature of the field up to the 1960s provides strong evidence of this pattern and is particularly illustrated by two important eras of public administration—the municipal reform period and the post-New Deal period.⁽¹⁾ The decade of he 1960s was one of the few periods of the twentieth century in which action was not the predominant pathway to concern about administrative issues. In contrast to this earlier pattern, the generation of public administration academics in the 1960s focused on writing and teaching as a goal unto itself, rather than as a way of searching for the meaning of action in which one was previously engaged.

Indeed, the original group of participants in the Minnowbrook conference came to the field of public administration through formal academic training; their quest for values, relevancy, and meaning developed as they looked out of the windows of the academy to the turbulent society of which they were a part.⁽²⁾

While some were on the inside looking out during the 1960s, others were attempting to define meaning and relevancy within the world of action rather than the world of the academy. This paper is an attempt to explore the influence of that action experience on the public administration field. The authors of this paper spent the 1960s engaged in a part of the social action that spawned the “new” public administration movement.

We believe that our involvements in the 1960s led to the development of perspectives on public administration which are somewhat different from those of individuals who were primarily involved in academe during those turbulent times. This paper begins with a short autobiographical account which provides the personal context for our perspectives. It then contrasts our views with those of the Minnowbrook group and focuses on those elements that make up our perspective on the field.     

A Subnational Study of Insurgency: FARC Violence in the 1990s

This article examines the traditional political and economic factors that have been purported to explain the prevalence of insurgency. It tests the following hypotheses at the subnational level in Colombia: guerrilla violence is positively associated with exports; higher levels of insurgency are associated with low levels of GDP per capita or negative growth rates; guerrilla violence emerges in the context of weak state presence; and higher levels of state repression are associated with higher levels of insurgent violence. The analysis utilizes a zero-inflated negative binomial to capture dynamics of both intensity and onset of violence. The econometric analysis is supplemented with cartographic visualization and qualitative analysis.     

Family history in canada

Life-cycle service was an essential institution in early-modern England that slowly died during the transition from a pre-industrial to a fully industrial economy. A socially pervasive and culturally broad movement of young people from their parental homes to live and serve in the homes of others, life-cycle service was integral to the demographic, economic, and social framework of the era and could not survive when that framework changed. This article examines the institution of life-cycle service, some of the underlying demographic, economic, and social structure that supported it, the changes in that structure that led to its demise, and the ramifications for young people of that demise. Although inevitable, the loss of life-cycle service with its broad social base denigrated service as an institution and was not without other costs especially for young women.     

The indirect transfer of glass fragments to a jacket and their subsequent persistence

Experiments were conducted to investigate a scenario sometimes encountered in casework, where a police officer has attended a scene and shortly afterwards arrested a suspect. The experiments involve the transfer of glass fragments from a surface scattered with broken glass to a hand, and then from the hand to the sleeve of a poorly retaining jacket. The persistence of the transferred fragments was studied by collecting the glass fragments as they fell off the jacket, whilst the wearer was walking on the spot. The recovery regime allowed the number and proportion of fragments picked up and transferred to the jacket from the hand to be determined, and the rate at which they were lost from the jacket to be monitored. The results show that large numbers of glass fragments can be picked up on a hand from a suitable surface. A subsequent firm grip to a poorly retaining jacket was found to transfer a significant proportion of the glass fragments from the hand to the jacket. In seven of nine tests performed, ten or more glass fragments were recovered from the jacket 60 minutes after the original contact between the hand and the broken glass. More than twenty fragments were recovered in three of these tests. Consequently, where possible and appropriate, the full circumstances of a case should be considered carefully before indirect transfer is ruled out as a possible explanation for recovered “matching” glass. This is the case even for poorly retaining clothing.     

Investigating soviet espionage and subversion: the case of Donald Maclean

This essay sets out the dimensions of investigating Soviet espionage and subversion, highlighting how Maclean's image as a Soviet agent has developed over the past 50 years. It will then consider to what extent new documents at the Public Record Office alter his image. Maclean's crime was treachery but what exactly is the intellectual challenge in investigating espionage? Just what can be achieved? Sir Dick White former head of MI6 offered this advice: Espionage is a crime that often leaves no trace of evidence. The investigator relies upon intuition for coincidences. After considering the circumstances, he might reach the moment of epiphany when all the facts added up to one conclusion¹