The personal as political: the function of the private space in contextualizing the ‘other’ in Jewish–Palestinian encounters

The private/personal sphere is perceived to be a channel of empowerment that fosters processes of acknowledgment and recognition during encounters between participants from different cultural groups. Drawing on ethnographic research at an inter-cultural program that offered a space for engagement for Palestinian and Jewish educational trainees’, we followed the role played by the private sphere in the process of articulating a perception of the ‘Other’. Most participants from both groups chose to locate their position toward the ‘Other’ in their private sphere. The different ways through which the private sphere was preformed and justified by the participants reveals that for the Palestinian participants the private sphere served as a way to create particularity, while for the Jewish participants it served as a way to construct universalized claims. These justifications, which were tightly coupled with each groups’ social position and social power, were working in both cases to isolate the discussion from immediate historical, social, and political contexts. Thus, these findings deepen our understanding of the meaning ascribed to the private sphere and the common epistemology that defines the personal as political and contributes to advance warm relations between Palestinian and Jewish individuals that these educational frameworks seek to foster.     

How can we better align private security with the public interest? Towards a civilizing model of regulation

How can we better align private security with the public interest? This question has met with two answers in the literature on private security regulation, one seeking to cleanse the market of deviant sellers, the other to communalize the market through the empowerment of buyers. Both models of regulation are premised upon a limited neoclassical economic conception of how market transactions map onto the public interest. This article makes the case for a new model of regulation, one that seeks to civilize the market. Drawing upon the insights of economic sociology, our model regards the market for security as a moral economy in which commodity and non‐commodity values jostle and collide. On this basis, we propose a regulatory architecture where buyers and sellers are cast not only as economic actors but also as moral actors, revealing new avenues through which to encompass private security within the democratic promise of security.     

On regional security governance once again: how analysis of the Southern Caucasus can advance the concept

Already introduced to the academic and political debate some years ago, the concept of “security governance” still needs to be clarified. In particular, four main shortcomings need to be overcome to make the concept more useful for an assessment of current security dynamics: in the first place, attention has been devoted more to “governance” than to “security”, while failing to consider the role of the understandings and perceptions of the actors involved in the governance system. Second, the literature on the actors (governmental or not) involved is still fragmented. Third, the literature on security governance has too often been detached from reflections on regionalism, while it would be useful to further explore the relationship between cognitive definitions of regional and security dynamics. Fourth, the literature has predominantly focused on Europe and the transatlantic area, overlooking processes of “region-building” in security terms in other “unexpected” geographical spaces. After proposing avenues to overcome the current gaps in the literature, the Southern Caucasus is chosen as a case study to show the different instances of security governance emerging, thanks to definitions of the region in security terms that have involved regional and external actors, of a state and non-state nature.     

Transnational delegation in global environmental governance: When do non‐state actors govern?

Non‐state actors – including firms, non‐governmental organizations, and networks – are now a permanent fixture in environmental politics. However, we know surprisingly little about when states choose to delegate to non‐state actors through multilateral treaties. This paper provides an historical picture, tracing patterns of delegation to non‐state agents in a random sample of multilateral environmental agreements from 1902 to 2002. I introduce a new unit of analysis – the policy function – to understand what non‐state actors actually do as agents. I find that analyses of delegation are sensitive to the unit of analysis; patterns of delegation at the treaty level are very different from those at the level of individual policy functions. While overall the decision to delegate to non‐state actors – what I term transnational delegation – is rare, it has grown over time. Complex treaties, those with secretariats, and those focused on the management of nature are more apt to delegate to non‐state actors. Non‐state agents fill a small, but growing role in multilateral environmental treaties.     

The fusion of the private and public sectors*

ABSTRACT

Much of contemporary analysis treats the public and private sectors as two rather separate and fundamentally different realms. Many see one of the two sectors as inherently virtuous and the other as corrupt. The paper shows, in considerable detail, that the two sectors are deeply intertwined. It follows that we need a rather different framework to study state and society.     

Thinking Friendship With and Against Hannah Arendt

This essay interrogates Hannah Arendt’s different notions of friendship, their weaknesses and strengths, with a view to establishing the basis for a more adequate discussion. After examining her conception of friendship first among the ancients, and then in “dark times”, the essay asks how are we to understand friendship among the moderns when times are not particularly dark. This requires a critical reading of her conception of private intimacy and social association in order to construct a more plural understanding of friendship, and of the criteria by which it can be judged, as it is differentially instituted within, and traverses, the private, civil and political realms.     

Do Partners in PPPs view Public and Private Management Differently?

Differences between public and private management have been studied extensively by comparing sectors, but not within cross‐sectoral collaborative arrangements. As participants in such arrangements have actually experienced both management styles, examining their perceptions of how these styles differ may contribute innovatively to existing literature. This paper compares such perceptions between public and private sector project members (N = 63) involved in four PPPs in the Netherlands. We assess (1) to what extent and under which conditions these project members view public and private management differently and (2) how they evaluate these differences. By triangulating quantitative and qualitative interview data, we examine Boyne's classical hypotheses and find that more than two‐thirds of the statements making reference to these hypotheses offer support for them; more so, the vast majority of such statements evaluate sectoral differences negatively. Intriguingly, type of PPP is a stronger determinant of perceived differences than the manager's sector of origin.     

涉民营企业犯罪案件的刑法适用

综观近年来发生的涉民营企业冤假错案,法律适用错误无疑是重要原因。司法机关应当审慎对待每一个涉民营企业刑事案件,充分保护民营企业产权,在恪守刑法谦抑性理念、合理把握宽严相济刑事政策的基础上,准确理解、适用刑法条文,避免过早、过度的刑事介入以及适用不合时宜的罪名给民营企业发展增加不必要的刑事负担。为此,司法机关应准确区分民营企业行为合法、违法和犯罪的界限,准确区分涉民营企业案件自然人、分支机构和企业犯罪界限,慎用非法吸收公众存款罪和擅自发行股票、公司、企业债券罪等不合时宜的罪名。     

Private exit,public exit,and achievement in secondary education

Perceptions of declining academic achievement have motivated a number of governments worldwide to introduce greater school choices to parents in the hope of fostering competition and thus arrest the apparent decline in educational achievement. Exit provides dissatisfied citizens with a decisive mechanism to signal their views regarding the quality of public education institutions. Private exit – abandoning the public education system entirely – is well established in most countries; however, public exit – moving to a separate system of selective high-quality public schools – is an alternative that exists in only a few jurisdictions. We employ a comprehensive 6-year panel of data on socio-educational advantage and academic achievement for an education system which offers both private and public exit choice. In so doing, we show how different exit options affect choices and outcomes for various categories of schools.     

Out of tune or well tempered? How competition agencies direct the orchestrating state

This article analyzes the impact competition agencies have on the orchestrating role of states in domestic private regulation. I argue that these agencies can significantly affect interactions in the governance triangle through the way they apply a “logic of the market” to evaluate agreements between firms. The regulatory framework of European Union competition law has increasingly constrained the ability of firms to take into account broader interests when making agreements to foster social objectives. This logic of the market clashes with the ever‐increasing emphasis governments place on enabling firms to enter into such agreements. I analyze this tension through a case study of a pact of Dutch retailers to collectively introduce higher animal welfare standards for poultry. Using regulatory network analysis I trace the governance interactions between the governance triangle on the one hand (government, non‐governmental organizations, and firms), and the Dutch competition authority, Autoriteit Consument en Markt (ACM) and the European Commission on the other hand. Attempts by the Dutch government to instruct the ACM to be more lenient toward private regulation were blocked twice by the European Commission. As a result, the Dutch government abandoned private regulation as the preferred mode and proposed a bottom‐up process that would generate public regulation as a way to avoid conflict with competition policy. I argue that paradoxically enough the intervention of these non‐majoritarian competition agencies against the “will” of the governance triangle has potentially increased the effectiveness and legitimacy of orchestration processes.