Clarity,surprises, and further questions in the Article 29 Working Party draft guidance on automated decision-making and profiling

The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party's recent draft guidance on automated decision-making and profiling seeks to clarify European data protection (DP) law's little-used right to prevent automated decision-making, as well as the provisions around profiling more broadly, in the run-up to the General Data Protection Regulation. In this paper, we analyse these new guidelines in the context of recent scholarly debates and technological concerns. They foray into the less-trodden areas of bias and non-discrimination, the significance of advertising, the nature of “solely” automated decisions, impacts upon groups and the inference of special categories of data—at times, appearing more to be making or extending rules than to be interpreting them. At the same time, they provide only partial clarity – and perhaps even some extra confusion – around both the much discussed “right to an explanation” and the apparent prohibition on significant automated decisions concerning children. The Working Party appears to feel less mandated to adjudicate in these conflicts between the recitals and the enacting articles than to explore altogether new avenues. Nevertheless, the directions they choose to explore are particularly important ones for the future governance of machine learning and artificial intelligence in Europe and beyond.     

The influence of the Regional Coordinating Unit of the Abidjan Convention: implementing multilateral environmental agreements to prevent shipping pollution in West and Central Africa

The Regional Coordinating Unit of the Convention for Co-operation in the Protection and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environment for West and Central Africa (the Abidjan Convention) has under its wings several multilateral environmental agreements including those addressing shipping pollution. Shipping, potentially, has negative impacts on marine fauna and flora and air quality, with implications for public health. The Regional Coordinating Unit seeks to strengthen implementation of the Abidjan Convention by party-states through co-operation with state actors using various pathways based on its internal resources and competencies but the Unit is also starting to explore engagement with potential non-state actors. The ability of the Unit to exert influence on implementation is constrained by domestic politico-administrative institutions. This paper seeks to understand the influence of the Regional Coordinating Unit on the implementation of the Abidjan Convention in the field of shipping pollution. It uses three theoretical perspectives for the analysis: the influence of international environmental bureaucracies, domestic regulatory-politics and transnational governance. The paper shows how these theories are complementary because the influence of international bureaucracies such as the Regional Coordinating Unit cannot be adequately understood through factors internal to their organisation alone but needs to be analysed in relation also to external factors, both domestic politico-institutional ones in states that international bureaucracies work with, and the role of relevant non-state actors in the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements. It is concluded that, although influence cannot be measured directly, it is likely that Regional Coordinating Unit’s influence through its autonomy-centred efforts are quiet strong but negatively constrained by the traditional state-centric responsibility for implementation of international legal instruments where domestic regulatory-politics lack sufficient political will and support from and engagement with non-state actors.     

HOW THE WEST LOST ITS BEST OPPORTUNITY FOR RECONCILIATION IN AFGHANISTAN

The article asserts that the current situation in Afghanistan could have been quite different. Well before 9/11, Abdul Haq, a Pushtun and a veteran commander in the war against the Russians, put forward a plan to overthrow the Taliban from within, a plan which had significant support inside Afghanistan. Haq, who was subsequently killed by the Taliban, was ignored by the West, which chose instead to intervene militarily, to support the war lords of the Northern Alliance and thus to marginalise the Pushtuns. The 2002 Loya Jirga was the crucial moment for the West, which failed to realise that Pakistan had its own, very different agenda.     

Editor's Note

An evaluation approach that is collaborative and elicitive may well serve as a catalyst for transforming relationships of power, standing in stark contrast to more conventional and staid evaluation practices that are technical in nature and actuarial in intent. Election of an orientation is the most decisive and strategic choice that is made in approaching evaluation and articulating value imperatives in fieldwork, coloring as it surely does the pragmatic stages of evaluation and good practice for the peacebuilder.     

Context and Continuity: Philistines,Pharisees and Art in English Culture

Cultural identity is an important facet of globalization, and cultural policy involves an international network of policymakers at the subnational, national, and supranational levels. It is often unclear what cultural identity means and who effects policy change, especially in a fast-changing world. The author examines one of the most important cultural policy conflicts of the last two decades to suggest that the intersections among multiple policymakers led to considerable learning through interaction and clear articulation of policy preferences. The author examines the culture war between the European Union (EU) and the United States over trade in cultural products.¹ The conflict played out in international organizations and allowed the EU to come together to articulate a somewhat coherent cultural identity policy, while the United States realized the difficulty of sustaining cultural exports in the context of provocative cultural identity frames.     

Abstracts of papers given at the 25th annual conference of the Scottish legal history group

Modern Legal History. A. H. Manchester. London. 1980. Butterworths. xxv and 419 pp (incl. Index). £14.50 cased, £9.75 limp.

Introduction historique au droit. John Gilissen. Brussels. 1979. Emile Bruylant. 756 pp. 2200 Bfr. (2075 Bfr. abroad).

Legal Evolution: The Story of an Idea. Peter Stein. Cambridge. 1980. Cambridge University Press. xi and 131 pp (incl. Index). £15.00 cased.

Judecata Domneasca în Tara Româneasca ?i Moldova (1611–1831) (Princely Justice in Wallachia and Moldavia, 1611–1831) Part I. Judicial Organisation, 1611–1740 by V. A. Georgescu and P. Strihan. Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, Bucharest, 1979, 218 pp. Lei 17.

Bizantul ?i Institutiile Române?ti pîna la Mijlocul Secolului al XVIII lea (Byzantium and Romanian Institutions until the mid‐18th century) by V. A. Georgescu. Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste Romania, Bucharest, 1979, 296 pp. Lei 22.50.

TUC: The Growth of a Pressure Group 1868–1976. Ross M. Martin. Oxford. 1980. Clarendon Press. xiii and 394 pp (incl. Index). £14.00 cased.     

Does Performance Management Lead to Better Outcomes? Evidence from the U.S. Public Transit Industry

Although performance management processes are widely assumed to be beneficial in improving organizational performance in the public sector, there is insufficient empirical evidence to back this claim. In this article, the authors examine the impact of performance management practices on organizational effectiveness in a particular segment of the public transit industry in the United States. The analysis utilizes original survey data on performance management practices comprising both strategy formulation and performance measurement in 88 small and medium‐sized local transit agencies in conjunction with comparative outcome data drawn from the National Transit Database maintained by the Federal Transit Administration. The results provide evidence that more extensive use of performance management practices does in fact contribute to increased effectiveness in this segment of the transit industry.