Suchergebnisse

The use and abuse of political power in Africa has been closely related to the role and function of the police. Alice Hills explores the impact of the cautious moves toward liberalization across the continent both on policing systems and on the relationship between those systems and national development. Hills engages contemporary debates on security sector reform, governance, law and justice, and civil society to examine the environment within which Africa's police forces operate. She also addresses the special problems confronting reconstructed states: the prevalence of low-intensity conflicts, reintegration programs, UN and NGO involvement, the nature of policing, and differing concepts of professionalism and liberalization. A series of case studies—from Congo (Zaire), Eritrea, Ethiopia, Namibia, Somalia, and Uganda—inform this original book, which offers an important prism through which to view state-society relations in Africa

Focusing on the police as providers of order and a measure of its success, this book shows that order depends more on what has gone before than on reconstruction efforts and that tension is inevitable in donors' attempts to reform brutal local policing. It offers a critique of the failure of liberal orthodoxy to understand the meaning of order

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Glossary -- Introduction -- Assessing change -- Chapter 1 Assumptions, principles and strategy -- Border guarding -- Schengen's security space -- Strategic tools -- Common assumptions and principles -- Control and protection -- Chapter 2 Bosnia Herzegovina and Slovenia -- State Border Service of BiH -- Slovenia -- Chapter 3 Macedonia and Albania -- Macedonia -- Albania -- Chapter 4 Regional Trends and Realities -- Shared assumptions -- Subversive spaces -- Notes.

Sooner or later, donor-led discussions of state- and institution-building in conflict-affected societies with low literacy rates address the role of police forces, which are to be developed in the light of community-oriented policing. However, the implementation of a basic policing programme in the Somali cities of Kismayo and Baidoa in 2014 raises important questions about the applicability of this approach. It suggests that, rather than police in the western sense of the word, Somali forces are part of an endemic power structure that accommodates and normalizes instability. Focusing on what police officers actually do and on what local residents expect from them, this article uses three practical indicators to explore the factors at work: recruitment, reward (i.e. stipends) and, importantly, retention. This pragmatic approach allows an analytical and empirical exploration of a prototypical form of police and policing in a society lacking meaningful state-based institutions and processes. Specifically, Kismayo's and Baidoa's experience helps to identify the minimal requirements needed for formal policing in unstable societies. It suggests that militia-style policing is residual, rather than novel, and its dynamics are best understood as reflecting a series of social and political influences within unequal fields of power, with the emphasis on exploitation and survival.

Prompted by the trend to see information and communications technology (ICT) as a tool for capacity building, this article asks whether the use of ICT has-or can-recast centre-periphery relations in a hybrid country such as Somaliland. Taking as its departure point Herbst's observation that a fundamental problem confronting African leaders concerns how to extend or consolidate authority over sparsely settled lands, it uses recent developments in Somaliland's coast guard and immigration police to assess ICT's contribution to changing security provision in remote and coastal areas. This allows for an analysis of Somaliland's law enforcement framework, the relationship between its politics and practice, the practical application of its coercive resources, and the Silanyo government's priorities and preference for consensus and co-existence whenever security imperatives allow. It suggests that ICT can be a desirable operational tool or a variable in existing power networks, but that it does not represent a new mode of security governance. ICT's potential to connect Somaliland's government and populace, and politics and practice, is for now minimal, but identifying the ways in which security actors such as coast guards actually use ICT allows for a more accurate assessment of the variables shaping centre-periphery relations. Contrary to Herbst's observation, the Silanyo government does not need to overtly or systematically extend, consolidate or exert its authority in remote and coastal areas. Spatial metaphors such as centre-periphery help to clarify the situation, but the significance invested in them reflects western rationalities, rather than Somali realities. (International Affairs (Oxford) / SWP)