冲突预防与非政府组织的作用

学界对冲突预防(CP)的理解充满争论。本文把CP分为结构型和直接型预防两类。前者着重讨论冲突原发地的潜在原因,并致力于一种长期的参与;后者主要关注短期策略以及冲突方和第三方的互动。在实践中,国家和政府间组织(IGOs)一直是CP的主导力量。联合国就是最明显的参与者,在冲突预防中扮演着重要的领导角色。鉴于当代冲突的动态和特点与传统的国家间冲突不同,NGO在预防国际冲突中的作用得到越来越多的关注。NGOs在CP中的各种角色和活动往往是和国家及政府间组织并行或同在的。在实践中,全世界各国、IGOs以及参与经济、政治和社会关系的NGOs之间存在着依存关系。提高解决当代冲突的能力和效率,我们就应该也必须通过一个跨国框架来增进国家、IGOs和NGOs之间的合作与协调。     

The future of Fair Trade coffee: dilemmas facing Latin America's small-scale producers

Fair Trade has become a dynamic and successful dimension of an emerging counter-tendency to the neo-liberal globalisation regime. This study explores some of the dilemmas facing the Fair Trade movement as it seeks to broaden and deepen its impact among the rural poor of Latin America's coffee sector. We argue that the efforts to broaden Fair Trade's economic impact among poor, small-scale producers are creating challenges for deepening the political impact of a movement that is based on social justice and environmental sustainability. The study is based on two years' research and seven case studies of Mexican and Central American small-scale farmer cooperatives producing coffee for the Fair Trade market.     

Law enforcement and civil society in Russia

Many Russian civil society organisations are directly engaging with state law enforcement agencies, particularly the police, in joint efforts to improve the performance and change the norms and values of state officials involved in administering justice. These activities are based upon a model of state–society relations that stresses the possibility of a positive relationship of mutual assistance and partnership between the state and civil society. Such assistance is often described by these organisations as helping low-level bureaucrats better perform their core organisational tasks. This model is contrasted with two alternative models of the role of civil society, which depict civil society either as teaching citizens the norms and values associated with liberal democracy, or as a potential counter-weight to an over-reaching state. Three cases studies of cooperation between NGOs and law enforcement agencies demonstrate the utility of such an approach. Although these projects suffer from some common pathologies of civil society work in Russia, they remain important, not least because of the presence of ‘uncivil society’ extremist groups who also are trying to influence the norms and beliefs of state law enforcement officials. The civil society activities profiled here suggest that direct, cooperative engagement with the state is one important component of long-term efforts to transform the Russian state in a more liberal, ‘civil’ direction.     

The Politics of Food Regulation and Reform in Ireland

Amid a period of increasing political anxiety generated by the BSE crisis, the Irish Government sought to replace a confusing medley of food regulations with a single agency responsible for regulating food from the 'farm to the fork'. Presented as a radical departure from a regime previously discredited, its remit would be to redefine the relationship between risk assessment, management and communication. In this context, the paper puts forward three principal arguments. First, that while the Minister for Health and Children was keen to extol both the scientific credentials of the agency, and the importance of shifting regulatory responsibility from the Department of Agriculture and Food (DAF) to the Department of Health and Children (DOHC), what remains novel is the manner in which reform has managed to retain political access for influential agri-business interests. Second, that any reform undertaken should be fully cognisant of the international agreements between the European Union and the World Trade Organisation which extended further a free market in food trade. The agency's institutional architecture therefore was framed with the intention of restoring market confidence without threatening the habitat of those multi-national companies that occupy this arena. Finally, that the role of science (and risk) in food regulation has altered. Rather than perform the task of sustaining order through responsible government, science now participates in (re)constituting order through the market.     

State and local law enforcement response to transnational crime

This report, using the results of the survey and new research, identifies some next steps to providing State and local law enforcement with tools to identify and respond to transnational crime.... The second section [excerpted here] is a literature review of the current state of the field in identifying and responding to transnational crime at the State and local level. This section provides a context for the interpretation of the results of this study....