The Rule of Law and Automation of Government Decision‐Making

Governments around the world are deploying automation tools in making decisions that affect rights and entitlements. The interests affected are very broad, ranging from time spent in detention to the receipt of social security benefits. This article focusses on the impact on rule of law values of automation using: (1) pre‐programmed rules (for example, expert systems); and (2) predictive inferencing whereby rules are derived from historic data (such by applying supervised machine learning). The article examines the use of these systems across a range of nations. It explores the tension between the rule of law and rapid technological change and concludes with observations on how the automation of government decision‐making can both enhance and detract from rule of law values.     

Reviews

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Romantic relationships across boundaries: global and comparative perspectives

ABSTRACT

In response to the mass globalization of the twenty-first century and associated migration, a recent boom in social-scientific research has analyzed various manifestations of ‘binational’, interreligious and interracial romantic relationships in the present and recent past. This special issue seeks to historicize this research by drawing on key case studies from around the world and across time and building on relevant historiography and theoretical literature. It seeks to chart how intermarriage and related relationships took shape: who participated in these unions? How common were they, and in which circumstances were they practiced (or banned)? With a global, diachronic and interdisciplinary perspective, we also aim to question some of the categories behind these relationships. Central to these issues, we argue, is the question of boundary formation. Here, we draw on social-scientific research that has emphasized multiple boundaries involved in the creation of identity and groups. We also highlight the intersectionality of those boundaries, meaning that notions about ethnicity, religion, gender and social class often overlap and intersect in various ways when it comes to relationships. Contributions to this collection tap a range of related questions, such as how did geographical boundaries – for example, across national lines, distinctions between colonies and metropoles or metaphors of the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ – shape the treatment of intermarriage? What role have social and symbolic boundaries, such as presumed racial, confessional or socio-economic divides, played? To what extent and how were those boundaries blurred in the eyes of contemporaries? How have bureaucracies and law contributed to the creation of boundaries preventing romantic unions? Romantic relationships, we suggest, provided a key test case for boundary crossings because they brought into sharp relief assumptions not only about community and assimilation, but also about the sanctity of the intimate sphere of love and family.     

From faith to race? ‘Mixed marriage’ and the politics of difference in Imperial Germany

ABSTRACT

Intermarriage was a key site for testing politics of difference within the multicultural German Empire. Across the German states in the mid-nineteenth century, marriage between members of different religions frequently proved impossible. Until various civil marriage laws were introduced between the 1840s and 1870s, marriage remained within the remit of the church. As a consequence, marrying across confessional lines was rarely permitted. The implications were clear: marriage was seen as the embodiment of one’s culture – defined primarily in confessional (alongside socio-economic) terms, and it was also viewed as a key transmitter of culture by producing new generations of faithful observers of particular denominations. As a country divided between three confessions, religion in mid- to late nineteenth-century Germany proved an important aspect of difference within the new German nation state. By the end of the nineteenth century, following the introduction of civil marriage, mass waves of migration, the growth of urbanization and the expansion of the German overseas empire, the connotation of ‘mixed marriage’ in Germany appeared to have shifted. It remained a code for crossing confessional lines, but its resonance had changed. By the late nineteenth century, ‘mixed marriage’ had come to characterize another kind of cultural mixing as well: that between races, both at home within Germany and abroad within its colonies and diasporic outposts. And, between 1905 and 1912, ‘mixed marriage’ between Germans and ‘natives’ had been banned in German Southwest Africa, East Africa and Samoa. Why and how was intermarriage a flashpoint in debates on German identity politics at the turn of the twentieth century? As this article shows, intermarriage in the German Empire mattered to families, broader communities, and legislators because it was a pivotal means through which social groups formed, interacted and maintained boundaries at a time when visions of Germany were expanding.     

Managing research institutions in developing countries: Test of a model

This article proposes a model for the analysis, management and development of research institutes in developing countries which incorporates four interdependent dimensions: (i) a strategic management dimension concerned with the management of the organisation's internal and external environments and their interrelationships; (ii) a dimension concerned with ‘collaborative institutional arrangements’; (iii) an internal management and supervision dimension; and (iv) a ‘research operations’ dimension. A preliminary corroboration of the model's validity is derived from a review of relevant published literature and summaries of evaluation studies of research institutions in developing countries.