Legal Diversity in the Middle East: Some Comparative Research Horizons

This paper sketches the contours of Middle Eastern jurisprudence by focusing on the historical processes which gave rise to Islamic law and the four schools of justice which branched out from the seminal doctrines of Muhammad. Sources of case law and potential research horizons are discussed within the framework of comparative criminal justice.     

Contra‐Associational Strategy in a Hybrid Regime: Ecuador, 2007–2015

Over the last decade, political scientists have identified Ecuador as one of Latin America's hybrid regimes. This article examines how President Rafael Correa combined legal reforms, bureaucratic controls and other policies in a contra‐associational strategy aimed at extending executive control over civil society. While the strategy significantly altered the operational environment for civil society groups, it did not completely strip them of their capacity to oppose the regime. Ecuador's experience underscores the ambiguity at play in hybrids; in pursuit of regime legitimation, regimes must cede some space to opponents while simultaneously sabotaging civil liberties.     

‘An Internal Housekeeping Matter’:1 Whitehall and the BBC Monitoring Service

For over 65 years the BBC Monitoring Service has been providing Whitehall and its diplomatic, intelligence and security communities with a rich seam of ‘open‐source’ information mined from the word's media. However, while the continued importance of this work remains undisputed, in 2003 the future of the Monitoring Service was brought into serious doubt as a result of a proposed major reduction in its government funding. The source of this problem was a decade old dispute between sponsoring government departments over where the burden of responsibility lay for the costs of the service. The ensuing deadlock led the Intelligence and Security Co‐ordinator, Sir David Omand, to commission a Review of BBC Monitoring by Sir Quentin Thomas whose recommendations formed the basis of a new funding and governance regime for the Monitoring Service. This is the story of that dispute and the means used to achieve its eventual resolution.     

Reliability and validity of the 2002 and 2006 Chapel Hill expert surveys on party positioning

This research note reports on the 2002 and 2006 Chapel Hill expert surveys (CHES), which measure national party positioning on European integration, ideology, and several European Union (EU) and non‐EU policies. The reliability of expert judgments is examined and the CHES data are cross‐validated with data from the Comparative Manifesto Project, the 2003 Benoit‐Laver expert survey and the 2002 Rohrschneider‐Whitefield survey. The dataset is available on the CHES website.     

Something Old, Something New: A Historical Perspective on the Butler Review

Simon Case and Catherine Haddon demonstrate the value of contemporary history by looking at the recent Butler Report into intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in its historical context. Intelligence failures form the most visible activity of the intelligence services, yet from the policy-maker's perspective it is important that the intelligence process remains undisturbed so that the intelligence product remains useful. The intelligence effort on Iraqi WMD, as with previous changes in intelligence targets, shows the difficulties in establishing good intelligence on a new threat. Increases in demand and the centrality of intelligence put more pressure on the intelligence services. Butler has set a precedent for public awareness and therefore a desire for accountability that must be internalised by government and the intelligence services. The problems experienced over Iraq show the need for continual reappraisal by both producers and users of intelligence products, particularly in light of defence policy changes and the wider machinery of government.     

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE: THE ROLE OF THE HR FUNCTION IN THE MODERN PUBLIC SECTOR

As the public sector has modernized and sought to become more efficient and cost‐effective, the effective and strategic management of people has received increasing prominence and there have been calls for the Human Resource (HR) function to play a more strategic role. However, not much is known about whether the role of the HR function has changed substantively. In this paper, we present empirical evidence from six matched‐pair public sector organizations in the UK to assess whether HR functional roles have changed, as envisaged, into a model more akin to the private sector. The findings highlight the complex and often contradictory nature of HR functional roles, and suggest that new and more strategic roles have not replaced traditional approaches but, rather, have been grafted on, giving rise to a variety of hybrid HR forms.